\n<\/p>\n
Barely six months after Giorgia Meloni\u2019s government was sworn in, the chief executive of Italy\u2019s public broadcaster Rai resigned. Carlo Fuortes cited \u201ca political conflict\u201d as the reason for his departure in May 2023, a year before the end of his term.<\/p>\n
The top posts quickly went to nominees with ties to Meloni\u2019s Brothers of Italy, a party with neofascist roots. Rai\u2019s CEO is now Giampaolo Rossi, a former Rai board member who has in the past voiced support for Vladimir Putin, Viktor Orb\u00e1n and Donald Trump.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey want to take control of Rai and change the narrative to their way of thinking,\u201d a senior Rai insider said at the time. Another said every new government made management changes but the difference with this one was it was \u201cruthless\u201d.<\/p>\n
<\/span>Giampaolo Rossi, chief executive of Italy\u2019s national public broadcaster Rai, has previously voiced support for Vladimir Putin, Viktor Orb\u00e1n and Donald Trump.<\/span> Photograph: Emanuele Cremaschi\/Getty Images<\/p>\n In France, meanwhile, shortly before 2024 snap elections, the far-right National Rally said it would privatise public broadcasting if it won. Public TV and radio needed \u201ca bit of liberty\u201d and some programmes were too left-leaning, the RN\u2019s vice-president said.<\/p>\n The following year, a party allied to the RN \u2013 which could well produce France\u2019s next president \u2013 set up an inquiry into the \u201cneutrality, workings and financing\u201d of public TV and radio. Marine Le Pen said both had \u201ca clear problem with neutrality\u201d.<\/p>\n Public service media are meant to provide quality, unbiased, fact-driven content accessible to the broadest audience as part of a free, plural media that safeguards the rule of law by providing reliable, transparent information and scrutinising power.<\/p>\n In Hungary, however, public TV and radio are propaganda machines \u2013 and the watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF) estimates that thanks to private media acquisitions by regime-friendly oligarchs and inaction by captured regulators, the government controls about 80% of the country\u2019s outlets.<\/p>\n <\/span>The Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orb\u00e1n\u2019s media playbook of attacking public broadcasters as biased and unaffordable is serving as a blueprint elsewhere in the EU.<\/span> Photograph: Attila Kisbenedek\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/p>\n Polls suggest Orb\u00e1n, Hungary\u2019s prime minister, may be ousted in elections on 12 April. But the Orb\u00e0n media playbook is serving as a blueprint elsewhere in the EU, with nationalist parties attacking public broadcasters as biased and unaffordable, and their billionaire backers building rival, avowedly rightwing media empires.<\/p>\n Q&A<\/span><\/p>\n <\/span>Show<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n The rule of law is the set of standards and principles that ensures no one in society is above the law, and that everyone is treated equally, in accordance with the values of democracy and fundamental rights, and under the control of independent courts.<\/p>\n Defined more broadly, it should ensure that authorities use their powers and public resources for citizens\u2019 good. That means, among other things, that people should be accurately and fairly informed by a free and plural media, and able to express their views through civil society organisations and by exercising their right to protest.<\/p>\n To make sure those standards are met, the rule of law requires governments to maintain independent, impartial institutions \u2013 including, most obviously, the judiciary.<\/p>\n On 12 April, Hungary will hold a general election in which Viktor Orb\u00e1n risks defeat. For more than a decade, Orb\u00e1n has shown how the rule of law can be degraded in a modern EU country.<\/p>\n He has packed the courts with judges loyal to him, and the media with editors happy to parrot his propaganda. He has tyrannised NGOs, and curbed LGBT and other human rights, creating what he has called an “illiberal democracy\u201d.<\/p>\n He may be out next month, but the rule of law is increasingly under threat across Europe. In this series, Guardian correspondents look at the state of the rule of law in four major EU countries: what\u2019s crumbling, and why it matters.<\/p>\n Thank you for your feedback.<\/p>\n During Meloni\u2019s annual official press conference in early January, she said press freedom was \u201ca fundamental prerequisite of any democracy\u201d. Her government\u2019s attitude towards journalists tells a very different story.<\/p>\n The government has used defamation suits to silence journalists and public intellectuals, and shuts down questions whenever it can. (Meloni herself was caught telling Donald Trump at the White House last summer: \u201cI never want to speak to my press.\u201d)<\/p>\n Since her far-right-led administration came to power, Italy has slid from 41st to 49th in the World Press Freedom Index. When the European Commission flagged this in a rule of law report, Meloni accused left-leaning Italian media of twisting its findings.<\/p>\n <\/span>Giorgia Meloni\u2019s government has used defamation suits to silence journalists and public intellectuals, and shuts down questions whenever it can.<\/span> Photograph: NurPhoto\/Getty Images<\/p>\n There is more. The European rights NGO Liberties notes that last year \u201cpolitical figures\u201d targeted journalists with not just legal attacks but also physical intimidation and smear campaigns. New concerns emerged over spyware and surveillance.<\/p>\n Political interference in Rai \u201ccontinues to increase\u201d, Liberties said, adding to uncertainties including serious funding concerns: the government holds nearly 100% of the public broadcaster\u2019s shares, giving it substantial control over its operations.<\/p>\n \u201cCriticism of a government or opposition to a government is part of democracy,\u201d said Lorenzo De Sio, of Luiss University in Rome. \u201cBut what we have here is a government that finds criticism a nuisance \u2026 They try not to answer questions.\u201d<\/p>\n In France, even with the far right not (yet) in power, the picture is not much different. The far-right-led parliamentary inquiry into public broadcasting was described by Le Monde as an \u201cideological war machine\u201d aimed at \u201cpolicing public opinion\u201d.<\/p>\n Public broadcasting must be accountable, the paper said, but this \u201cwitch-hunt\u201d was \u201cless about reforming than silencing. As regards pluralism and diversity of opinion, the public service has no lessons to learn from those who have sworn to destroy it.\u201d<\/p>\n Meanwhile, RSF describes the concentration of private media ownership in France as \u201ca major concern\u201d. The rightwing tycoon Vincent Bollor\u00e9 controls France\u2019s most-watched news channel, CNews, plus a radio station, a weekly magazine and a Sunday newspaper.<\/p>\n <\/span>A poster seen at an anti-fascism demonstration in Paris in 2025, with Vincent Bollor\u00e9 and the channels C8, CNews and Europe 1, says: \u2018The far right is talking to you\u2019. <\/span> Photograph: Magali Cohen\/Hans Lucas\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/p>\n RSF said Bollor\u00e9\u2019s interventionism and the \u201clack of pluralism\u201d were \u201craising fears of the triumph of opinion over facts\u201d. Last year France\u2019s rightwing former culture minister, Rachida Dati, used CNews and Bollor\u00e9\u2019s Journal du Dimanche to attack public service media.<\/p>\n In Germany, the far-right Alternative f\u00fcr Deutschland (AfD) party has long had the country\u2019s vast, well-funded network of public broadcasters in its sights, calling for far-reaching change at the outlets, which are financed by audience fees.<\/p>\n AfD, which is now the biggest opposition party and could this year seize regional power for the first time, claims the national broadcasters ARD and ZDF and their regional affiliates are government mouthpieces biased towards mainstream parties.<\/p>\n Two east German states, Saxony-Anhalt and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, are due to hold votes in September and polls show the AfD surging towards 40% support, which could be enough to give it overall control depending on other parties\u2019 performance.<\/p>\n <\/span>Alice Weidel, co-leader of the Alternative f\u00fcr Germany (AfD) party, speaks as SpaceX CEO Elon Musk appears on screen during an election campaign event in January 2025.<\/span> Photograph: Karina Hessland\/Reuters<\/p>\n If elected, the AfD has said it would fight to restructure public broadcasting and cut the \u20ac18 (\u00a316) monthly fee paid by every household \u2013 a move it tried in Saxony-Anhalt and Thuringia, where it does not have majorities and so was voted down.<\/p>\n \u201cWe want to finally pull the plug on this woke, anti-German and manipulative influence,\u201d said Ulrich Siegmund, the party\u2019s parliamentary group co-leader in Saxony-Anhalt, adding that it aimed to \u201cterminate\u201d the public broadcasting agreement.<\/p>\n Moderate rightwing parties have also accused the public service of bias, prompting Spiegel magazine to ask if there was still hope for public TV and radio, \u201cincreasingly \u2013 and not just from the right \u2013 seen as a mouthpiece for urban, progressive elites\u201d.<\/p>\n Defenders of the public broadcasters note that Germany\u2019s Basic Law, or constitution, stipulates the \u201cbasic provision\u201d of public media access to citizens, allowing them to be informed and engaged citizens of a healthy and representative democracy.<\/p>\n They see the crusade against the broadcasters as a transparent attempt to pave the way towards authoritarianism in Germany. \u201cThey don\u2019t want independent journalism,\u201d a media affairs expert with the Social Democrats, Holger H\u00f6velmann, said of the AfD. \u201cThey want media that spread messages that are politically opportune for them. They despise this pluralistic society.\u201d<\/p>\n That was also what critics argued was the guiding principle of Law and Justice (PiS), the nationalist party that ran Poland for eight years until 2023.<\/p>\n <\/span>A placard reading \u2018Free media. Free people. Free Poland\u2019 is seen at a demonstration in defence of media freedom in Krakow in 2021.<\/span> Photograph: Jakub Wlodek\/Agencja Wyborcza.pl\/Reuters<\/p>\n After years of blatant pro-government propaganda, the new government saw public media as a top priority and resorted to placing the outlets into administration and using commercial law to take managerial control.<\/p>\n The public broadcaster, TVP, was rocked by the changes in the run-up to Christmas in 2023, with its news channel TVP Info forced off air for more than a week and the main news bulletin given a new name to mark a break from the previous era.<\/p>\n But Poland\u2019s public media remains politicised within a deeply polarised media landscape. An Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe report from last year\u2019s presidential election said the rocky transition \u201cfailed to ensure impartiality, despite some reporting improvements\u201d.<\/p>\n The Federation of Screenwriters in Europe said the far-right media playbook aimed to \u201cdelegitimise journalism, intimidate critics, concentrate media influence, weaponise regulators \u2013 and defund or capture public institutions that shape shared reality\u201d.<\/p>\n Addressing the French parliament\u2019s inquiry last week, Bollor\u00e9 denied he was waging a political war, claiming he was the \u201cperfect scapegoat\u201d for a hostile elite. \u201cWe do not bow,\u201d the billionaire said. \u201cWe are free. And that\u2019s why we displease.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Barely six months after Giorgia Meloni\u2019s government was sworn in, the chief executive of Italy\u2019s public broadcaster Rai resigned. Carlo Fuortes cited \u201ca political conflict\u201d as the reason for his departure in May 2023, a year before the end of his term. The top posts quickly went to nominees with ties to Meloni\u2019s Brothers of<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":47738,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[1839,896,1003,205,177,745,2640],"class_list":{"0":"post-47737","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-attacks","9":"tag-europe","10":"tag-europes","11":"tag-media","12":"tag-public","13":"tag-service","14":"tag-survive"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47737","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=47737"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47737\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/47738"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=47737"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=47737"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=47737"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}What is the misrule of law series about? <\/h4>\n