Three journalists, a photojournalist from Corriere della Sera, Massimo Barsoum, a journalist from Fatto Quotidiano, Angela Nittoli, and a journalist from La7, Roberto Di Matteo, were stopped by the police while they were heading to cover the latest blitz by Ultima activists Generation, in Rome. Despite showing professional badges and identity documents, they were still taken to the Castro Pretorio police station, where they were held for an hour in a security room, with the door open. «To me personally, something like this had never happened to me. I have been doing this job for twenty years and yes it has happened to me that, during an event, they ask me for my professional card. But once it was exhibited and the appropriate checks were carried out, I went back to covering the event”, explains Angela Nittoli to Open. The three colleagues were stopped before reaching the point where the activists were. When the officers asked for documents, they showed everything necessary. “Ten minutes, we’ll check and then you can go,” an officer told them. But the ten minutes became half an hour on the street and about an hour and a half in the police station. The three, arrested around ten o’clock, were released just after midday. Once they arrived at the station aboard the patrol car, they underwent a body search, their backpacks and an equipment check. Nittoli, when she needed to go to the bathroom, was accompanied by a female officer. “They asked me not to close the door, but to close it,” she says. Before leaving, she says “they showed us a report that we didn’t sign, we refused”. The reason? The search, for example, was not mentioned in the document. “So, in fact we left without a card in our hands,” she explains. The reporters are receiving the solidarity of many colleagues and their editorial staff. The national president of the Order of Journalists, Carlo Bartoli, declared: «Last May 10th we were received by the Minister of the Interior Piantedosi who gave us ample assurance on the protection of journalists in carrying out their work in full respect of the right to news. It had happened in the previous days that colleagues had been stopped and taken to the police station in Padua and Messina. Now history repeats itself in Rome. We reiterate it firmly: journalists regularly registered with the Order and equipped with a professional card have not only the right, but the duty to follow news events and their work cannot be interrupted without valid and well-founded reasons by the Police Force . We would not like the arrest of journalists to become a practice. It is unconstitutional and detrimental to freedom of the press and citizens’ right to be informed.”
