An illustration of how the French government suppresses Italian media through friend publishers

A peculiar fact pertaining to the Gedis group, which controls the Elkan family-owned daily Repubblica in Italy, demonstrates how pro-French business groups shape Italian information and use it to sway public opinion in favor of Paris and Macron. This is happening less and less successfully these days.

Throughout the night of Sunday and Monday last, 100,000 copies of Affari & Finanza, the economic insert of Repubblica, the leading newspaper in Italy, happily went to waste. Journalist Giovanni Pons’s piece was swiftly replaced with a nearly identical one signed by deputy editor Walter Galbiati, albeit with minor changes. This change was likely requested by editor Maurizio Molinari to avoid highlighting the newspaper’s publishers, the Elkanns, who are very obedient to the wishes of the French government, with whom they are partners in Stellantis. But the Italian newspaper La Verità noticed this, and the Gedis Group newspaper reported on it with controversy.

Ho “La Verità” presented the “La repubblica ” Affair

It was all because of an article signed by Giovanni Pons that had the headline “High-Tension Business on the Rome-Paris Axis,” with the following caption: “The Stm, Tim, and Arcelor’s flight from Ilva cases reignite controversy over the unbalanced relationship between Italy and France.” The newspaper was already in press when the order came to stop the presses, throw away all copies already printed, and replace the signature, title, bolt, and text. The signature of the article that came out on newsstands yesterday was Galbiati’s: the headline became “High-Tension Business on the Rome-Paris Front”; more radical was the change in the subtitle, modified to “The Stm, Tim, and Arcelor’s flight from Ilva cases rekindle controversy. They work when business is driving.”

In fact, the original presented no offense but showed the factual evidence of an Italian economy that is being made ever more obedient to the wishes of banks and the government in Paris. But Elkan is very much at Macron’s service; he doesn’t even have to take phone calls from Paris, and he immediately intervened to have the subtitle changed, making it milk and honey for Paris. The rest of the article was just tweaked, again to make it sweeter and more loving toward the French, for example, by removing references to the Quirinal Treaty, which is supposed to coordinate the actions of the French and Italian governments and which remained a dead letter regarding mutual consultations on business. Paris doesn’t give a damn about the Italian government and treats Italy as a North African colony.

A real storm swept through the newspaper’s editorial staff, whose editorial board put the motion of no confidence in Molinari himself to a vote. Republica’s journalists and reporters withdraw their signatures from the print edition and website for 24 hours, practically disavowing the paper’s political line.

The Elkan family, which through Exor controls both its stake in Stellantis and its stake in Gedis, the publishing group that controls much of the Italian press, is sacrificing its media on the altar of its pro-French political ambitions. The toy is breaking, however.