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Governments have never really loved the press because a free journalism can put them in trouble simply telling the truth. And Italy in recent months was a good example of how to kill journalism. A few days ago, the Supervisory Board of RAI approved a par conditio rule to be applied 30 days before the election. Meanwhile, the government did not allow the extension of the "government grants to publishing", wiping out funds to more than 100 newspaper.

No more political tv-show during the 30 days preceding the Italian election. This is what the Commission for Rai Supervision has established, yesterday, while it was trying to make precise rules on equal conditions of presence in TV for the regional elections on 28 and 29 March. But with the new rules the information shows will disappear when, before the elections, they should inform even more.

After a year in Sri Lanka there is still not a culprit for the death of Lasantha Wickrematunge, the director of The Sunday Leader killed by four gunmen as he drove his car to the newspaper. Before he died, he wrote an editorial in which he accused the Sri Lankan government for his death. It's just one of the many journalists in the world who have been killed and maybe will never have justice.

Five days ago was the fifth anniversary of journalist Deyda Hydara murder. He was the editor of newspaper "The Point" and he was killed while was driving his car. Deyda had been for more than 30 years a correspondent for news agency France-Presse and for Reporters Without Borders. Strongly critical of President Yahya Jammeh government (hostile toward Gambia reporters), the journalist defended press freedom with his life.

Many people believe that in Italy, today, being a journalist is not so easy. Because the censorship is a long arm that controls everything and comes from above. But there are countries that are doing much worse. One of these is governed by a dear friend of Silvio Berlusconi: Vladimir Putin. Russia has no press freedom and this is not a news. The news is that in Russia people are killed and across the border almost nobody is talking about this.

Many people stayed for a day in front of the RAI (the italian public television) headquarters in Viale Mazzini asking for a live tv news, requested by the TG3, of the No-B day, the demonstration against Silvio Berlusconi. The director of the tv news, Bianca Berlinguer, had asked to broadcast the event with connections and services from the square, but in the end the General Director, Mauro Masi, said no. The only Italian television covering the event will be a satellite one, Rainews24.

Italy is near to became a nation just like Russia, Iran or Sri Lanka, states where information is controlled by the government and the journalists who dare to tell the truth subject to threats and killed. We have already regime's information, and since many years. Besides this there are regions of the South, where organized crime does not want journalists to investigate and write about what it does. And so the threats to journalists are increasing, and rarely reach national news.

Sometimes there are news that might almost cheer us on the independence of Italian journalism. Except that Italy, unfortunately, in some way is also involved with censorship abroad. A few days ago it was learned that the French newspaper France Soir would have fired its journalist from Rome and Moscow because they have criticized too much the political power of these countries. The journalists, according to the newspaper Le Monde that interviewed them, would have been too critical of Putin and Berlusconi.

Rupert Murdoch, owner of News Corporation, did not wasted time and after the digital version of the Wall Street Journal now is ready for the Times: the famous British newspaper, in 2010, will be available online only on payment. James Harding, editor of the historic newspaper, has confirmed that from next spring it will be set a digital tariff for the subscription or for the daily reading.

If tonight the Tg1 (italian state-owned main tv news program) opened its evening edition with the save the premier law, calling it so. If it said that the law to shorten the statute of limitation for all but the most serious crimes and those of immigrants is unconstitutional, racist and in fact an amnesty for bribers, polluters, crooks and many others such criminals? If the Tg1 would speak for the first time in its history of all the trials in which Berlusconi stands accused?