Italian reporter fined €5000 for dig at PM Giorgia Meloni’s height

Rome: A judge in Milan has found an Italian journalist guilty of defaming Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, and ordered her to pay damages of €5000 ($8100), as well as court costs, the defendant’s lawyer said.

In Wednesday’s ruling, the journalist, Giulia Cortese, was also given a suspended fine of €1200 for two posts on Twitter, now known as X, in October 2021, when Meloni was a lawmaker.

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni with Tunisian President Kais Saied in April.Credit: AP

In one tweet, she described Meloni using “not nice words”, Cortese’s lawyer, David Olivetti, said. In another she took aim at Meloni’s height, suggesting Meloni was 1.2 metres (about 4 feet) tall.

The prosecutor trying Cortese had called it an example of body-shaming. At a campaign rally in 2022, Meloni told supporters she was 1.58 metres tall (5 feet, 2 inches).

Cortese said on Thursday that the past three years had been “quite stressful”. Her social media accounts were targeted by supporters of the prime minister, “who sent me insults and threats”.

It was “very unpleasant,” she said, adding, “Above all, it seems absurd to clog up Italian courts, which have to deal with far more serious things, with such nonsense.”

Italy’s Premier Giorgia Meloni welcomes her Hungarian counterpart Viktor Orban at the Chigi Palace government office in Rome in June.Credit: AP

Olivetti said he would read the ruling before deciding whether to appeal.

Italy defines defamation as “damage to the reputation of a person through communication with several persons”. It does not distinguish between public figures and ordinary people.

The case against Cortese is only the latest in a series of defamation lawsuits brought by Meloni against some of her outspoken critics. Luca Libra, a lawyer who has represented Meloni in several suits, said that, under Italian law, everyone has the right to criticise, as long as that criticism is not a personal offence.

Last year, a court in Rome ordered Roberto Saviano, author of the book Gomorrah, about organised crime in Naples, to pay €1000 and court costs for his criticism of Meloni during a television program in 2020 in which he used a slur to refer to her regarding her hard-line stance on illegal immigration. The court ruled that the slur overstepped the right to criticise. Saviano has the right to appeal against the ruling.

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and US President Joe Biden in 2023.Credit: AP

Another defamation lawsuit, against a man who used social media in 2019 to insult Meloni’s role as a mother, was settled last year. Neither party would discuss the terms of the settlement.

Several organisations that monitor press freedom have voiced concerns about the lawsuits in Italy.

Reporters Without Borders demoted Italy five places to 46th in its World Press Freedom Index this year, considerably lower than Germany (10) or France (21).

In its review of Italy, the organisation wrote that, “for the most part, Italian journalists enjoy a climate of freedom” but that they can give in to self-censorship “to avoid a defamation suit or other form of legal action”.

The organisation also raised a red flag about the legge bavaglio, or gag law, “advocated by Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s ruling coalition”, which limits what court and investigative reporters can publish.

Media Freedom Rapid Response, which monitors violations of press freedom across Europe, has also raised concerns about Italy’s defamation laws. It noted in a report this year that investigative reporters faced “an increasing number of vexatious lawsuits often led by members of the current government”.

In April, the journalists’ union at the state broadcaster, Rai, accused it of being “reduced to a megaphone of the government”. A month later, Rai journalists went on strike to protest against the government’s “suffocating control” of journalists there.

Cortese said that whether she appealed or not, the ruling would have an impact on her life. “As a journalist, I no longer feel free to write about politics because I could easily have problems, as I am not favourable to this government,” she said. Lawsuits, she said, “are a form of intimidation”.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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