Italy’s government plans to cut the annual licence fee that funds public broadcaster RAI. Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini announced the licence fee will be reduced from 90 to 70 euros in the next year’s budget, following up on what his right-wing League party sees as a plan to abolish the fee altogether.

The plan has been met with criticism from journalists and media leaders who fear that the cut will either defund the broadcaster and thus reduce the scope of its activities or will make RAI more dependent on the government, as funding will have to come from elsewhere in the state budget.

The licence fee system is under increasing scrutiny in countries like the UK, where the previous government floated plans to abolish it, and France, which scrapped the system last year. While reducing or abolishing a licence fee is a way to de-facto cut taxes at the time of cost of living concerns in Europe, the system is often an important tool for ensuring independence of public media.

The military conflict that started over a week ago following Hamas’ attack against Israel has had a heavy toll on journalists as part of its broader impact on the lives of civilians in Israel and Gaza. The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) estimates that at least 17 journalists died as a result of the war as of October 17.

Three Israeli journalists were killed in Hamas attacks on the country launched on October 7; multiple Palestinian reporters were killed in Gaza as a result of Israeli airstrikes. “Nearly half of the journalists killed were working as photojournalists or videographers, trying to document the crisis unfolding on the ground”, Axios notes citing CPJ data.

The 2023 Daphne Caruana Galizia Prize for Journalism went to a consortium of Greek, German and British newsrooms that investigated the Messenia migrant boat disaster, which left around 600 migrants dead near the shores of Greece in June this year.

The prize is awarded by the European Parliament as a tribute to Daphne Caruana Galizia, an investigative journalist from Malta killed in 2017.

“The joint investigation by the Greek investigative outlet Solomon, in collaboration with Forensis, the German public broadcaster StrgF/ARD, and the British newspaper The Guardian revealed how the deadliest migrant shipwreck in recent history happened as a result of the actions taken by the Greek Coast Guard”, the announcement notes.

Source of the cover photo: European Union, 2023 – EP

The Daphne Caruana Galizia Prize for Journalism

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Public broadcaster licence fee cut in Italy, the toll of the Hamas-Israel war – weekly news digest