Journalists hold a national strike on November 28th over their contracts: "The quality of reporting is deteriorating."

Below is the press release from the Italian National Press Federation regarding the strike called for October 28th.

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Journalism is a fundamental pillar of our country's democratic life, but the quality of information is deteriorating.

Publishers have failed to seize the revenue opportunities afforded by the digital transformation of the sector and, faced with the crisis in traditional media, have preferred to cut labor costs.

Reductions in editorial staff and journalists' salaries through layoffs, repeated crises involving layoffs and thousands of early retirements, and contractual paralysis have curtailed the supply of news, negatively impacting pluralism and citizens' right to information.

For these reasons, journalists have called a national strike for November 28 to protest the failure to renew the national labor contract between the Italian Federation of Workers' Unions (Fnsi-Fieg), which expired over ten years ago.

They believe that the development of information requires a new agreement with publishers that takes into account the loss of purchasing power of salaries eroded by inflation, that encourages young people to join newsrooms, and that guarantees adequate rights and wages for the thousands of contributors and correspondents—mostly temporary—who report on what happens in our cities every day.

The new contract must leave no one behind, protecting acquired rights, considering new professional roles, and addressing artificial intelligence and fair compensation for the transfer of content on the web.

The strike, which will be preceded the day before, November 27, by a street demonstration in Rome, is not politically motivated, but rather seeks to reiterate that quality reporting is only possible with independent, professional journalists protected, like all workers in our country, in their rights and adequate wages through the renewal of their employment contracts.