Censorship in Italy applies to all media and print media. Many of the laws regulating freedom of the press in the modern Italian Republic come from the liberal reform promulgated by Giovanni Giolitti in 1912, which also established universal suffrage for all male citizens of the Kingdom of Italy. Many of these liberal laws were repealed by the Mussolini government already during the first years of government, such as via the "ultra-fascist" laws of 1926.
In Italy, freedom of the press is guaranteed by the Constitution of 1948. This freedom was specifically established in response to the censorship which occurred during the fascist regime of Benito Mussolini (1922–1943). Censorship continues to be an issue of debate in the modern era. In 2015, Freedom House classified the Italian press as "partly free", while in the report of the same year Reporters Without Borders placed Italy in 73rd place in the world for freedom of the press.
Censorship during Italian unification (1814–1861) During Italian unification, in the period following the Congress of Vienna (1814–1815), incisive control over the press by the monarchies was in place on Italian territory. In the capitals of the various states, and in the most important urban centres, generally only one official sheet of the monarchy was issued, generally entitled Gazzetta, which was used for the publication of lawsAmong the "Official Gazettes" of the period, before the Official Gazette of the Kingdom of Italy. We remember the "Gazzetta Privilegiata di Milano" (single official newspaper of Kingdom of Lombardy-Venetia), the "Gazzetta di Parma" (official newspaper of the Duchy of Parma and Piacenza), the "Gazzetta di Firenze" (official newspaper of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany). and carefully selected news.
In addition to these, however, there were literary and cultural periodicals, where new ideas could be expressed. In 1816, on the initiative of the Austrians, a literary monthly magazine entitled Biblioteca Italiana was founded in Milan, in which over 400 intellectuals and men of letters from all over Italy were invited to collaborate (not always successfully). This magazine was counterbalanced by Il Conciliatore, a statistical-literary periodical close to the romantic ideas of Madame de Staël, which continued to appear until 1819 when it was forced to close.Encyclopædia Britannica, "Il Conciliatore", Encyclopædia Britannica Online, 2009. Retrieved 13 October 2009.
The situation of Italian journalism began to change with the foundation of numerous clandestine newspapers, printed by Carbonari nuclei and underground revolutionary movements, which led to the uprisings of 1820–1821. One of the best-known newspapers of this period is L'Illuminismo, published in the Papal Legations in 1820, along with La Minerva of Naples and La Sentinella Subalpina of Turin. In the same period, there was also a certain journalistic activism in Italian liberal circles. In fact, Antologia, a journal of science, literature and arts, founded in Florence in 1821, the Genoese Corriere Mercantile of 1824 and L'Indicatore genovese, to which the young Giuseppe Mazzini also collaborated, date back to those years.
Changes regarding freedom of the press occurred in 1847 and 1848 during the popular uprisings that occurred in those years, following new measures:
Edict of Pope Pius IX of 15 March 1847; Law of Leopold II, Grand Duke of Tuscany, of 6 May 1847; Edict of King Charles Albert of Sardinia of 26 March 1848; Decree of King Ferdinand II of the Two Sicilies of 29 January 1848.
These measures had the effect of limiting preventive censorship of the press.
In Florence the following were published: La Zanzara (1849); La Frusta (1849); Il Popolano (1848–1849); L'Arte (1848–1859) in which Carlo Collodi collaborated, Buon gusto (1851–1864); La Speranza (1851–1859); Etruria (1851–1852); Il Genio (23 December 1852–31 June 1854); Lo Scaramuccia (1853–1859); La Polimazia di famiglia (1854–1856); L'Eco d'Europa (1854–1856); L'Eco dei Teatri (1854–1856); L'Indicatore Teatrale (1855–1858); L'Avvisatore (1856–1859); L'Imparziale (1856–1867); Lo Spettatore (1855–59); Il Passatempo (1856–1858); La Lanterna di Diogene (1856–1859); La Lente (1856–1861) in which Carlo Collodi collaborated; L'Arlecchino (1858); Il Caffè (1858); Il Carlo Goldoni (1858); Piovano Arlotto (1858–1862); and Il Poliziano, from January to June 1859.
The Agenzia Stefani was founded in 1853 in Turin by Guglielmo Stefani. In Genoa in 1860, at the instigation of Giuseppe Mazzini, L'Unità Italiana was founded. In the wake of the Expedition of the Thousand, the following were founded in the same year: L'Ineditore in Palermo and in Naples the Mazzinian Il Popolo d'Italia.
Censorship in liberal Italy (1861–1922)
Many of the laws regulating freedom of the press in the modern Italian Republic come from the liberal reform promulgated by Giovanni Giolitti in 1912, which also established universal suffrage for all male citizens of the Kingdom of Italy. Many of these liberal laws were repealed by the Mussolini government already during the first years of government.
The first law that introduced a real censorship intervention in the unified Italy was the one relating to cinema screenings and dates back to 1913.Law no. 785 of 25 June 1913. With this law the representation of obscene or shocking shows or those contrary to decency, decorum, public order and the prestige of institutions and authorities was prevented. The subsequent regulation,Royal Decree no. 532 of 31 May 1914. issued in 1914, listed a long series of prohibitions and transferred the power of intervention from the local public security authorities to the Ministry of the Interior. In 1920, with a Royal Decree,Royal Decree no. 531 of 22 April 1920. a commission was established, which among other things had the task of preventively viewing the film script before filming began.
On 23 May 1915, during World War I, with decrees nos. 674, 675 and 689, censorship of the press and mail was established. Newspapers cannot provide information on the number of wounded, prisoners and fallen, on appointments and changes in military high command, other than that contained in official press releases. Some changes were introduced to the public security law; the prefects have the power to order the seizure of a newspaper and its suspension after two subsequent seizures. For the entire duration of the war, the authorities responsible for controlling the press, eager to present an optimistic picture of the situation to the public, suggested to the newspapers how to select the news. The pressure from the authorities, combined with the expectations of the public, who wanted to read only positive news in the newspapers, caused the Italian press to self-censor.
The newspapers, despite receiving well-detailed news from the front from their war correspondents, did not publish everything. They voluntarily concealed part of the news from the reading public, publishing articles that hid, and in some cases falsified, much of the truth. On 19 November 1918, after the end of the war, the causes of seizure of periodic publications were limited to information of a military nature and untruthful news that could cause alarm in public opinion or disturb international relations. With the decree of 29 June 1919, the restrictive regulations that came into force in the spring of 1915 were repealed; at the same time, the general director of public security, Vincenzo Quaranta, reduced surveillance on the media.
Censorship in Italy under Fascism (1922–1943) Censorship in Italy was not created with Fascism, nor did it end with it,Gabriele Nicola, Modelli comunicativi e ragion di Stato. La politica culturale sabauda tra censura e libertà di stampa (1720–1852), Editore Polistampa but it had a heavy influence in the life of Italians under the Regime.
The main goals of censorship under fascism were, concisely: Control over the public appearance of the regime, also obtained with the deletion of any content that could allow opposition, suspicions, or doubts about fascism. Constant check of the public opinion as a measure of consensus. Creation of national and local archives (schedatura) in which each citizen was filed and classified depending on their ideas, habits, relationships and any shameful acts or situations which had arisen; in this way, censorship was used as an instrument for the creation of a police state.
Censorship fought ideological and defeatist contents, and any other work or content that would not enforce nationalist fascism.During the World War II the screening of The Great Dictator (1940) by Charlie Chaplin and all the films produced in USSR
Censorship in public communications
This branch of the activity was mainly ruled by the Ministero della Cultura Popolare (Ministry of popular culture), commonly abbreviated as "Min. Cul. Pop.". This administration had authority over all the contents that could appear in newspapers, radio, literature, theatre, cinema, and generally any other form of communication or art.
In literature, editorial industries had their own controlling servants steadily on site, but sometimes it could happen that some texts reached the libraries and in this case, an efficient organization was able to capture all the copies in a very short time.
On the issue of censoring foreign language use, the idea of autarky effectively banned foreign languages, and any attempt to use a non-Italian word resulted in a formal censoring action. Reminiscences of this ban could be detected in the dubbing of all foreign movies broadcast on RAI (Italian state owned public service broadcaster): captioning is very rarely used. Censorship did not however impose heavy limits on foreign literature, and many works by foreign authors were freely readable. Those authors could freely frequent Italy and even write about it, with no reported troubles.
In 1930, it was forbidden to distribute books that contained Marxist, Socialist or Anarchist like ideologies, but these books could be collected in public libraries in special sections not open to the general public. The same happened for the books that were sequestrated. All these texts could be read under authorization for scientific or cultural purposes, but it is said that this permission was quite easy to obtain. In 1938, there were public bonfires of forbidden books, enforced by fascist militias ("camicie nere"). Any work containing themes about Jewish culture, freemasonry, communist, or socialist ideas, was removed also by libraries (but it has been said that effectively the order was not executed with zeal, being a very unpopular position of the Regime).
Censorship and press
It has been said that the Italian press censored itself before the censorship commission could do it. Effectively the actions against the press were formally very few, but it has been noted that due to press hierarchical organization, the regime felt to be quite safe, controlling it by the direct naming of directors and editors through the "Ordine dei Giornalisti".
Most of the intellectuals, who after the war would have freely expressed their anti-fascism, were however journalists during fascism, and quite comfortably could find a way to work in a system in which news directly came from the government.
Newer revisionists talk about the servility of journalists, but are surprisingly followed in this concept by many other authors and by some leftist ones too, since the same suspect was always attributed to the Italian press, before, during and after the Ventennio, and still in recent times the category has not completely demonstrated yet its independence from "strong powers". A well-known Italian journalist writer, Ennio Flaiano, certainly an anti-fascist, used to say that journalists do not need to care of "that irrelevant majority of Italians".E. Flaiano, Diario notturno e altri scritti, Rizzoli, 1977