Mafia attacks on journalists on the rise
Anti-mafia commission releases alarming report

(ANSA) - Rome, August 5 - Organized crime attacks and intimidation against journalists have been rising steadily between 2006 and 2014, the parliamentary anti-mafia commission said Wednesday in a report on the condition of journalists threatened by the mafia.
"The increase in acts of hostility against journalists is alarming," said commission chair Rosy Bindi and deputy chair Claudio Fava.
"There were 2,060 such attacks between 2006 and October 31 2014, with a steady increase that peaked in the first 10 months of 2014 when 421 acts of violence and intimidation took place - almost three incidents every two days," Bindi said.
Currently in Italy, 20 journalists live under armed guard and 11 have been killed by various mafia organizations, according to the report.
Calabria and Sicily are the two regions most dangerous for journalists.
The report said such acts of intimidation go almost totally unpunished since "there are very few incidents in which the perpetrators have been identified, tried, and convicted".
The report also pointed to the "unscrupulous and intimidatory" use of lawsuits in order to induce journalists to tone down their investigative reports.
TV journalist Milena Gabanelli, for example, has been sued for over 250 million euros by various disgruntled subjects in the course of her career as a hard-hitting investigative reporter.
The report goes on to denounce a "more subtle but no less harmful form of violence, which is the situation of extreme job and economic insecurity of the vast majority of the journalists who come under threat".
Freelancers are the "de facto supporting framework of the entire Italian news system" but have no juridical protection, and "this grave lack to remedied as soon as possible", the commission said.

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