The catalog of compliments is amazing: “Delinquent”, “terrorist”, “prejudiced”, “criminal”.
The portrait of Silvio Berlusconi drawn by Massimo Fini on the Fatto Quotidiano is a necklace with pearls that shine for their elegance and sobriety. The Knight – so Fini calls him – “threw a minor in the arms of a whore.” Or again, in another passage always at the tip of the club: “Do you think that everyone is like him, willing to bribe, to be bribed, interested only in money”. With a lot of Latin quotation that overturns St. Paul: «Omnia sozza sozzis».
It goes on like this for pages and pages, but for judge Damiana Colla everything is normal. The limits have not been exceeded and therefore the request for compensation made by the former Prime Minister must be rejected. Indeed, as the Fact was titled yesterday: «B. criminal and dangerous: that’s why it can be said ». Just like Fini in 2018.
The vocabulary of defamations is cleared of the sentence and thrown in the face of a protagonist of contemporary Italian history without causing even a scratch on the image of the Knight. Or rather, there is no defamation because the facts have holds in reality, because they must be placed in a context, because the criticism has more nuanced standards than the news.
Of course, reading the “indictments” against Berlusconi, who is a real literary genre, one wonders, albeit with the utmost respect for freedom of the press, where these stakes and boundaries are.
But the civil court of Rome finds an explanation or justification for everything.
To understand, labeling the Cav as a “delinquent” has its own foundation: with this word “we mean the one who delinquents” and the magistrate recalls the “definitive sentence for tax evasion” of the former premier, thus legitimizing the expression .
And the “terrorist” Berlusconi? Here we pass from the “core of truth” to the “context of the article” and the context can work wonders. We are in fact in a pre-election climate and during a demonstration the Knight had defined the sentence that prevented him from becoming prime minister “criminal”: “Berlusconi’s statement was evidently an expression of distrust of the judiciary that had pronounced it “. Here then, in the piece, the “terrorist” Berlusconi. An exaggeration? “Hence – explains the judge – the comparison with the Red Brigades who at the time went into hiding, considering that the claims of the actor (Berlusconi, ed) were similar, in terms of assumptions and purposes, but obviously not on the merits, to a subversive thought of the democratic order … ».
Berlusconi does not appear to have ever taken up the machine gun, but for what it is necessary the parallel holds: “In this perspective, having compared the actor to a terrorist – who instead of going underground, intended to become the President of the Council of a State he does not believe in – it appears legitimate exercise of the right of journalistic criticism ».
One can remain disconcerted, but for Damiana Colla there is no term used in the articles that does not find its compatibility with the rules of democracy.
And the always evoked continence, that not going too far, throwing phrases like stones? It is Berlusconi himself who is on trial for calling the former minister Danilo Toninelli a “fool”. But continence must also have accordion borders. “This nefarious man – Fini goes down lightly – this natural criminal, this corrupter of magistrates, of financiers, this colossal tax evader, this specialist in the sale of parliamentarians to the sound of millions of euros, this scammer against an orphan girl and a minor … is still always there. Only Robert Mugabe or Amin Dada can match him, but those were dictators ». It’s okay to dip in the ink of indignation, but isn’t that a little too much? “The expressions reported – replies the judge – while biting, and the tones used, albeit harsh, appear to be the result of a reasoned critical evaluation of the actor, a politician involved in numerous criminal proceedings”.
Therefore, Berlusconi will also pay the “litigation” expenses, amounting to 10,343 euros.
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