Italy witnessed a media blackout today, Friday, due to a journalists’ strike called to protest the fragility of the sector. The follow-up was very well received by information professionals throughout the day. Constant news channels on television broadcast reports on rural tourism and ways to explore it Boot By bike to the Cathedral of San Benito di Norcia; Or about the benefits of wines and cheeses from the center of the country and other archival materials. The same thing happened with news radio stations. Agencies kept their news streams closed and on the digital portals of large media outlets such as Republic, No Stampa also Il Corriere della Sera The previous day’s news seemed frozen, along with a notice that the page would be updated again first thing this Saturday.
“We don’t know what’s happening in the country today, we don’t even know how the transport strike is going,” summed up a city bus driver in Rome during the minimum service shift. The strike in the information sector coincided with a general strike on Friday against the government of Georgia Meloni in other public and private sectors such as transport or education for various reasons, which received much less support.
The media silence has been practically complete. The protests have gained a large following and an unprecedented scope in the past two decades. The last major and memorable strike in this sector occurred in 2006, over salary disputes on that occasion. Internal strikes in various media outlets are relatively frequent, but the fact that the entire sector has been paralyzed is exceptional.
The information blackout was promoted by the National Federation of the Italian Press (FNSI, its acronym in Italian). The reasons for the protest include the non-renewal of the collective agreement that expired ten years ago. Salaries have been frozen since 2016; Lack of initiatives to address digital transformation; And the fragility faced by employees, as well as external collaborators, of the majority of companies in a sector mired in a prolonged crisis.
“The pillar of democratic life”
“Today, Italian journalists are on strike because our collective agreement has not been renewed for ten years, but also because we consider journalism to be an essential pillar of democratic life in the country,” a memo from the Italian Federation said. This organization of journalists has highlighted how the technological revolution has shaken the sector in recent years, denouncing that editors and owners of large media organizations “have not embraced the economic opportunities that digital transformation brings to the sector and, in the face of the traditional media crisis, have opted for cuts.” For this reason, Italian journalists have demanded new conditions to counter the loss of purchasing power caused by inflation, protect collaborators and freelance journalists who often work in the media in precarious conditions, as well as regulate the use of artificial intelligence in the sector.
For the union, the future of journalism is threatened on various fronts. Primarily because of instability, because in recent years the number of journalists on the payroll has become fewer and fewer while the “exploitation of external collaborators without rights” is increasing dramatically. There are new storms on the horizon for this profession, also because of technology itself. Italian journalists are demanding that the new agreement address “new digital professions, regulate the use of artificial intelligence and provide balanced rewards for online content.”
Information section
In addition, organizers have called on the Information Administration, an Italian government entity that oversees the media sector, to reopen negotiations to draft a new collective labor agreement. The union demanded that “the new agreement must not leave anyone behind and must protect the rights achieved.” In parallel, the Italian Federation of Newspaper Editors (FIEG) responded to the journalists’ protest and stressed that over the past decade they have made “enormous investments” to ensure freedom and quality of information. “In a dramatic context in which companies recorded income losses, layoffs could have been avoided thanks to sector regulations,” said the National Union of Editors, which has long been harshly critical of digital giants such as Google or Meta.
A newsstand break will empty newsstands of newspapers on Saturday. Its echoes reached Pope Leo XIV’s trip to Türkiye and Lebanon. On Friday, the Italian journalists accompanying him did not report on his time in Istanbul. The previous day, journalists traveling on the papal plane delivered a message to the Pope explaining the reasons for the strike.