Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2009-10-08-Speech-4-058"
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"en.20091008.5.4-058"2
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"Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, in 2008, the Berlusconi Government granted a total of EUR 206 million in direct contributions to the press and to radio and television stations. As luck would have it, most of those millions went to the four main left-wing newspapers.
Freedom of the press in Italy has, in the Berlusconi Government, the most generous of backers. The left, in Italy and throughout Europe, has launched a campaign claiming that freedom of the press is under threat, a campaign based on scandalous fabrications and brazen lies. And, inevitably – as luck would have it here too – it launched this campaign only after Prime Minister Berlusconi had made a legitimate claim for compensation from two left-wing newspapers that had defamed him, accusing him of disgraceful behaviour, accusations based on complete fabrications that are beneath any form of journalism worth its salt.
Prime Minister Berlusconi is the first to say that freedom of the press is very important, but the freedom to insult, to deceive, to defame and to slander is something altogether different. In this case, every citizen – including, therefore, Prime Minister Berlusconi – has the right to be able to defend himself using the democratic means at his disposal, by asking a civil court to consider the attacks made against him in writing, something which, I would add, other leaders of the left have also done."@en1
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