March 14, 2026
Sveva Spadavecchia
Press Freedom and Saviano's Double Censorship: When the State and Organised Crime Shape Silence.
On July 14th, 2025, Francesco Bidognetti, a former leader of the Neapolitan Camorra already serving life imprisonment for multiple serious crimes, was sentenced to 18 months for threatening Roberto Saviano, an anti-mafia journalist known for exposing the operations and political influence of Italian organised crime.
Saviano has lived under 24-hour police protection since 2006, or since he published Gomorrah, exposing the inner workings of the Camorra, which caused him to receive death threats from the same group. It took the Italian courts 17 years to reach a final verdict for mafia-related intimidations. Speaking out, he said, turned his life into a “living hell”, but as it turns out, the Mafia is not the only force attempting to silence him.
Between 2020 and 2023, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and Lega leader Matteo Salvini filed a criminal defamation lawsuit against Saviano following his public criticism of their anti-immigration policies (2020–2023). The case highlights the strategic use of defamation lawsuits, often employed in Italy not only to protect reputation but also to discourage public dissent through recourse to the courts. This effect is further reinforced by Italy’s criminal defamation framework, which allows for prison sentences ranging from six months to three years: even in the absence of a conviction, the legal process itself can be punitive, costly, and exhausting. As Saviano himself has argued, criminal defamation proceedings consume time, money, and energy, encouraging self-censorship and discouraging investigative journalism, a fundamental pillar of democratic life.
While criminal organisations rely on threats and violence as instruments of informal censorship, the story of Saviano, shows that political actors achieve the same results by turning to the courts. Furthermore, his turbulent story reflects a broader pattern: when intimidation becomes normalised, whether through violence or litigation, press freedom is weakened far beyond any single case.
Indeed, it comes as no surprise that Italy ranks poorly in Europe for press freedom, placing 20th out of 27 countries. In the 2025 World Press Freedom Index by Reporters Without Borders, Italy placed 49th globally, a decline compared to previous years.
The European Commission’s 2024 Rule of Law Report similarly highlights structural concerns. Italy continues to fall short of European standards in protecting journalists and has yet to establish a National Human Rights Institution in line with the UN Paris Principles.
fidence in judicial independence remains weak: in 2024, only 36% of the general population and 42% of companies rated the independence of courts and judges as “fairly or very good,” marking a decline from 2023. In this context, rather than promoting measures aimed at strengthening trust in judicial institutions, the government has often politicized the widespread discontent toward the judiciary, an effort currently reflected in the upcoming justice referendum, framed as a response to the system’s shortcomings but widely regarded as more symbolic than capable of addressing its structural causes.
Indeed, the issue does not concern only the relationship between politics and the judiciary, but more broadly the autonomy of democratic institutions.
Similar concerns about political censorship and distrust exist in the field of public broadcasting. The public broadcaster RAI, formally bound by a service contract guaranteeing independence and impartiality, has long been the subject of criticism over political interference.
In 2024, the journalists’ union USIGRai issued an official statement, condemning a decision by the parliamentary oversight committee allowing political speeches and rallies to be broadcast in news programmes without opposing viewpoints or adequate journalistic mediation. Put more simply, news programmes could broadcast political interventions in full, without questions, contextualisation, or journalistic scrutiny. The statement explicitly warned viewers: “This is an attempt [by Meloni’s party] to transform public broadcasting into a “megaphone for the government.”
Although freedom of expression is protected by Article 21 of the Italian Constitution, recent years have shown signs of a growing gap between the formal protection of this right and its practical application. This tension is visible not only in political discourse but also in practice: physical assaults, death threats, and intimidation against journalists and reporters continue to occur; television hosts who showed critical approaches have been pressured to resign, and programmes have reportedly been cancelled after criticising government ministers. In the first six months of 2024 alone, the Mapping Media Freedom platform recorded 74 incidents affecting journalists in Italy.
What, then, has been the European Union’s response? In April 2022, the European Commission proposed a directive to counter Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation (SLAPPs) — abusive legal actions used to silence journalists, human rights defenders, and others engaged in matters of public interest. While the proposal marked a significant step, implementation across member states has been slow and uneven.
A more substantial development came in 2024, when the Council adopted the European Media Freedom Act (EMFA). The new rules, fully applicable from 8 August 2025, established a common framework for media services across the EU’s internal market and introduced safeguards aimed at protecting journalists and media providers from political interference. Whether these measures will meaningfully improve the situation in Italy remains to be seen.
Taken together, these developments point to a deeper democratic problem. The intimidation carried out by the Mafia and the pressure exerted by public officials may differ in method, but their objective is strikingly similar. One relies on violence and threats, the other on lawsuits and regulatory pressure, both producing the same result: silence.
The issue is not only that journalists are attacked from different directions, but that these pressures increasingly reinforce one another. What emerges is therefore not to be interpreted as a series of disconnected abuses, but rather, a systematic phenomenon; when organised crime and political power, however indirectly, generate parallel forms of intimidation, the space for dissent narrows.
Saviano once said, “Democracy is based not only on consensus that leads to electoral victory, but on the possibility of dissent and criticism. Without it, there is no democratic oxygen.” The real question is no longer whether journalists are under pressure, but whether Italian democracy can still breathe.