In Italy, in 2017, it was estimated that the average household net income is EUR 31,393 a year, or EUR 2,616 per month. In 2018, according to the National Institute of Statistics (I.Stat), 20.3 per cent of people residing in Italy were at risk of poverty, that is to say, they had an equivalent net income in the year preceding the survey of less than EUR 10,106 (EUR 842 per month). When the price for the news media is financially affordable for all households, including the disadvantaged ones, then it is more likely that democracy will be promoted (for geographic accessibility, see Indicator F1 – Geographic distribution of news media availability).
Table 2 compares the cost of access to the leading newspapers identified (price of the annual subscription and copy price for paper and online) to public and private television and selected online media.
Access to television news (Tg1, Tg5, TgLa7, and Sky News) is normally free of charge in Italy, though there is a cost related to accessing television news through the annual television licence fee [canone]. This is a tax on thepossession of a deviceon which it is possible to watch television, even though its profits finance only public television. Sky News belongs to the private network Sky Italia, a satellite-television platform, and offers a wide range of paid services. While other channels offered by Sky are paid, the channel dedicated to the news is accessible to everyone.
To determine the accessibility of online news, we calculated the average cost of a broadband Internet connection for a year, in 2019. While, generally, newspapers’ websites (la Repubblica, Il Fatto Quotidiano) and online magazines (such as Fanpage) are free, the website of one leading news media outlet (Corriere della Sera) offers ten free articles per month, and then it is necessary to buy a subscription (for more information on Italy’s digital audience, see Indicator F1 – Geographic distribution of news media availability).
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Overall, we argue that for a segment of the population (the lower-income household groups), these costs to access information can be high. According to Agcom (2018c), although almost all of the Italian population accesses the media, and over 80 per cent access information every day, lower education and economic levels can lead to the exclusion or marginalisation of certain segments of the population from the consumption of news (see also Indicator F2 – Patterns of news media use).
