Plans to sell La Repubblica and La Stampa have sparked concerns about a loss of editorial control, Simona Mangiante has told RT<\/p>\n
Plans for two of Italy\u2019s leading newspapers to be sold to a foreign media group amount to a \u201ctransfer of narrative power\u201d and risk putting control of the country\u2019s public debate in outside hands, journalist and former legal adviser to the European Parliament Simona Mangiante has warned.
\nSpeaking to RT on Tuesday, Mangiante commented on reports that Exor, the holding company of Italy\u2019s Agnelli family, is in talks to sell most of the media group GEDI \u2013 publisher of La Repubblica and La Stampa \u2013 to Greece\u2019s Antenna Group, owned by shipping magnate Theodore Kyriakou.
\nThe Greek conglomerate owns TV channels and other media assets across Europe and North America and is reported to have strong links to US business. Its advisory board includes senior American media executives, while Italian media have noted Kyriakou\u2019s ties to circles aligned with US President Donald Trump as a source of concern over a possible editorial shift at any outlets that may come under the group\u2019s control.
\n\u201cThis is not simply a business transaction, this is a transfer of narrative power,\u201d Mangiante said, describing La Repubblica and La Stampa as \u201cinstitutional newspapers\u201d that have shaped Italy\u2019s domestic narrative \u201cfor decades, almost for a century.\u201d Handing them to Antenna, which she called a \u201cforeign infrastructure,\u201d would mean that \u201ccontrol of the domestic narrative\u201d moves abroad, she argued.<\/p>\n
The planned sale, reportedly valued at around \u20ac140 million (just over $164 million), has triggered strikes, newsroom protests, and calls for government intervention. Workers fear for their jobs and a loss of editorial independence, while Italian officials have warned that media pluralism and freedom of information could be at risk.
\nMangiante said that in Italy, where politics and media are \u201cclosely intertwined,\u201d the main concern is \u201ccontrol, not simply pluralism,\u201d and that the government would lose influence over the \u201cmainstream setting of the news.\u201d
\nWhile the deal involves one private group buying another, Rome has little legal scope to stop it, she noted. If the sale goes ahead it will bring \u201ca dramatic change\u201d in how Italian news is produced and consumed, Mangiante warned.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Plans to sell La Repubblica and La Stampa have sparked concerns about a loss of editorial control, Simona Mangiante has told RT Plans for two of Italy\u2019s leading newspapers to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":26784,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":[],"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","footnotes":""},"categories":[4,6,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26783","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-economy","category-environment","category-politics"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mongolianews.mn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26783","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mongolianews.mn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mongolianews.mn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mongolianews.mn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mongolianews.mn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=26783"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mongolianews.mn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26783\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mongolianews.mn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/26784"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mongolianews.mn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26783"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mongolianews.mn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26783"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mongolianews.mn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26783"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}