(Half) island as isolation ward
Column: “If you read several newspapers at once in Italy, you’ll learn virtually nothing about what’s going on in the rest of the world,” writes Stephan Russ-Mohl.
Column If you inspect several newspapers at once in Italy, you learn next to nothing about what's going on in the rest of the world.Once again, we were forced either not to take note of world events at all or to do so through Italian glasses. In a self-experiment, I tried out both variants this time. I would like to report on the results of this experiment during my vacation far to the south near the tip of the boot.First, however, a few statistics: For 100 Italians, only about 12 newspapers are printed every day. By way of comparison, there are more than 40 newspapers per 100 Swiss citizens. However, to claim that almost 90 percent of all Italians do not read a newspaper would be a premature calculation. Probably more newspapers pass through several hands in the neighboring country than in Switzerland. Nevertheless, Italian non-newspaper readers are among the highest in Europe.
Now to the first part of the experiment: Let it be freely admitted that life "all'italiana" can be very relaxing. For a while, at least, it is possible to live without a newspaper without missing too much. The newspaper is not even indispensable for the well-being of a journalism professor - on the contrary, at last one can read books undisturbed by the daily news.
So let's not immediately put our southern neighbors and also all the young people in the corner who refuse to read the newspaper as a cultural asset. You don't need to know much of what you read there. And what you do need to know can be found elsewhere.
This brings me to the second part of the experiment. While the majority do not read newspapers at all or not regularly, the educated Italians know that they get at best half the truth in their newspaper. That's why they usually buy two or three papers at the kiosk: their personal favorite newspaper - for example, Il Giornale, which tends to be in the conservative camp, or the business paper Il Sole-24 Ore - and its left-wing counterpart Il manifesto or La Repubblica. Even in its selection of photos, the latter "demonstrates" anew every day that Berlusconi is simply a scoundrel - and how much the editorial staff is still happy about his deselection, which it helped to bring about.
In one respect, however, the Italian newspapers are similar, despite sharp political and ideological divergences: It is hardly possible to look beyond the borders of one's own country through Italian glasses. Even those who inspect several newspapers at once learn almost nothing about what is going on in Europe and the rest of the world. The exception to the rule are events and catastrophes involving compatriots - the deployment of Italian blue helmets in Lebanon, although politically less controversial, filled newspaper pages rather than columns for weeks. It was not much different last year with the kidnapping of journalist Giuliana Sgrena in Iraq.
Thanks to the tendency of Italian journalism to set its own topics, trivialities are often puffed up for days to become important: The fact that Günter Grass was in the SS may still be worth reporting, even south of the main ridge of the Alps. But whether he met "Ratzi," today's pope, in Bad Aibling as a youth or whether he just imagined it? The question has been tossed back and forth for pages in the feature pages.
Stephan Russ-Mohl heads the European Journalism Observatory at the University of Lugano.
Now to the first part of the experiment: Let it be freely admitted that life "all'italiana" can be very relaxing. For a while, at least, it is possible to live without a newspaper without missing too much. The newspaper is not even indispensable for the well-being of a journalism professor - on the contrary, at last one can read books undisturbed by the daily news.
So let's not immediately put our southern neighbors and also all the young people in the corner who refuse to read the newspaper as a cultural asset. You don't need to know much of what you read there. And what you do need to know can be found elsewhere.
This brings me to the second part of the experiment. While the majority do not read newspapers at all or not regularly, the educated Italians know that they get at best half the truth in their newspaper. That's why they usually buy two or three papers at the kiosk: their personal favorite newspaper - for example, Il Giornale, which tends to be in the conservative camp, or the business paper Il Sole-24 Ore - and its left-wing counterpart Il manifesto or La Repubblica. Even in its selection of photos, the latter "demonstrates" anew every day that Berlusconi is simply a scoundrel - and how much the editorial staff is still happy about his deselection, which it helped to bring about.
In one respect, however, the Italian newspapers are similar, despite sharp political and ideological divergences: It is hardly possible to look beyond the borders of one's own country through Italian glasses. Even those who inspect several newspapers at once learn almost nothing about what is going on in Europe and the rest of the world. The exception to the rule are events and catastrophes involving compatriots - the deployment of Italian blue helmets in Lebanon, although politically less controversial, filled newspaper pages rather than columns for weeks. It was not much different last year with the kidnapping of journalist Giuliana Sgrena in Iraq.
Thanks to the tendency of Italian journalism to set its own topics, trivialities are often puffed up for days to become important: The fact that Günter Grass was in the SS may still be worth reporting, even south of the main ridge of the Alps. But whether he met "Ratzi," today's pope, in Bad Aibling as a youth or whether he just imagined it? The question has been tossed back and forth for pages in the feature pages.
Stephan Russ-Mohl heads the European Journalism Observatory at the University of Lugano.
