As stated above, the ties between journalism, political parties, big corporations, and the state have always been strong in the country (see Indicator C2 – Independence of the news media from powerholders), and media have often been used by private or state-linked owners to wield influence in the political world. Information on the leading news media’s ownership and of the key business figures are available, but not easily provided by the media themselves. While informed citizens can access this information through Internet research, leading news media are not keen to publish information on their ownership and key business figures.
The Communications Guarantee Authority (Agcom) collects (through the survey Informativa Economica di Sistema [Economic System Information]) and publishes all this information every year; however, this data is not easily accessible for ordinary citizens.
All news media’s websites contain some link to or information about the publisher, the owner, and the newsroom. However, this type of information is not immediately visible on the media webpage. An exception in this respect is RAI, which is required to provide all this relevant information by law.
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