“Unpopular ideas can be silenced and inconvenient facts kept dark, without the need for any official ban,” wrote George Orwell in his preface to Animal Farm in 1943. And I thought the Italian prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, had a tight enough grip on public opinion without the need for any “official ban”.

Berlusconi controls roughly 80% of Italian free-to-air television channels, in a country where just 20% of the population reads newspapers. Did he really need to impose any further constraint on freedom of speech? A draft law that is going to be approved by the parliament in the following weeks will gag the last few, daring news outlets that exert oversight on the government.

“È possibile ridurre al silenzio le idee impopolari e tenere nascosti i fatti scomodi senza alcun bisogno di veti ufficiali”, scriveva George Orwell nella prefazione della Fattoria degli animali nel 1943. Pensavo che il primo ministro italiano Silvio berlusconi avesse già un controllo sufficiente sull’opinione pubblica e non sentisse il bisogno di imporre veti ufficiali….. Continua a leggere