Journalist fined for comment on PM’s height

A court in Milan has imposed a €5,000 penalty on reporter Giulia Cortese for a jibe about Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni

A Milan court has ruled that journalist Giulia Cortese must pay €5,000 ($5,465) in damages to Italy’s Giorgia Meloni over an online insult about her height. The judge said the comments on X (formerly Twitter) were “defamatory” in nature and “body-shamed” the Italian prime minister.

Cortese was also given a second suspended fine of €1,200 and can appeal the ruling.

The case dates to October 2021, when Cortese posted a mocked-up photo of Meloni with a picture of the late fascist leader Benito Mussolini in the background. The politician, who was then in opposition and became prime minister a year later, confronted the journalist online over the picture. The reporter replied with a string of messages, one of which said: “You don’t scare me, Giorgia Meloni. After all, you’re only 1.2 meters (4 feet) tall. I can’t even see you.”

In a post on Facebook, Meloni wrote at the time that “this falsified photo is of unique gravity.” She added that she had “already instructed my lawyer to take legal action against this despicable hoax.”

While the judge eventually concluded that the Mussolini post did not violate the law, the court ruled in Meloni’s favor concerning Cortese’s comments on her stature.

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According to media reports, the Italian prime minister’s height is between 1.58 and 1.63 meters.

Commenting on X on Thursday, Cortese claimed that “Italy’s government has a serious problem with freedom of expression and journalistic dissent.”

This is not the first time Meloni has taken a journalist to court. Last October, a court in Rome fined anti-mafia reporter and author Roberto Saviano €1,000 plus legal expenses for insulting the right-wing politician over her hardline anti-immigration stance on a TV show in 2021.

In its 2024 World Press Freedom Index, Reporters Without Borders ranked Italy five points lower than last year, relegating it to 46th place. The organization cited a growing number of lawsuits against journalists as one of the reasons.

Last month, Vera Jourova, Vice-President of the EU Commission and commissioner in charge of values and transparency, said that Brussels was seeing “negative trends in the media in Italy.”