"Hard to understand. Easy to understand". This has been the motto of the last promotional campaign of La Vanguardia, which was accompanied by current images and whose leitmotif was that, although reality and social changes are complex, the newspaper makes it understandable why what happens in the world and around us.
One of the images chosen for the campaign showed Giorgia Meloni, Silvio Berlusconi and Matteo Salvini, holding hands in an electoral campaign event after which the leader of the ultra-right party Brothers of Italy won the elections and became first Minister of Italy with the support of Forza Italia and the League.
Some Italian readers of the newspaper have found this choice highly offensive. “There is little to understand: it is called democracy. Your newspaper offends the Italian people who elected their government”, Giorgio Calabretti wrote to me in an email signed by 15 other people and in which the ad was withdrawn. “It is an insult to the dignity of the Italian people and to the professionalism of your newspaper. You should have more respect for the politicians democratically elected by the Italian people”, assured Anna Chiara de Franceschi.
The campaign, they explain from the marketing area, has been withdrawn but "in no case was it aimed at criticizing Italy but rather as a reminder of the complexity of the world in which we live" -especially at a time when war has returned to European soil and inflation punishes companies and citizens - and point out that our newspaper offers answers to understand it. The images chosen were of various themes and in one of them you could even see the Barça player Ousmane Dembélé, a symbol of the Via Crucis that the team is going through.
The ad claimed, with a provocative point, the function of the fourth estate of the media and each of its protagonists could have reasons to feel offended. But in the case of the image of Meloni, Berlusconi and Salvini, it was indeed the democratically elected representatives of one of the great European powers. Although the newspaper has previously published information and editorials that severely question their proposals and trajectories, at the same time it has maintained due respect for the institutions they represent. A critical and demanding look at the different powers and rulers is one of the inalienable duties of journalism, but we must not forget that in order to exercise it it is also essential that our readers know that we do our job with the most scrupulous impartiality.
