Court fines Italian reporter for mocking Prime Minister’s height

An Italian journalist who ridiculed the small stature of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni online has been ordered by a court to pay 5,000 euros ($5,440)in damages, she told AFP Friday.

Giulia Cortese, who is freelance, had called the far-right leader “a little woman” in an October 2021 social media post, adding: “You don’t scare me. Furthermore, you are 1.20 metres tall (3.9 feet).”

The comment was a response to Meloni’s announcement on Facebook that she was suing Cortese for having earlier posted a falsified photo of the premier sitting in front of a photograph of Fascist leader Benito Mussolini.

Meloni, leader of the post-fascist Brothers of Italy party, was in opposition at the time.

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Contacted by AFP on Friday, Cortese confirmed that the Milan court had ordered her to pay 5,000 euros to Meloni, a civil party in the case, for defamation.

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

“This country seems to get closer to (Viktor) Orban’s Hungary: these are bad times for independent journalists and opinion leaders.”

Cortese told AFP that a separate accusation over the Mussolini comparison was thrown out, as it did not constitute a crime.

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Meloni, who took office in October 2022, has a history of suing journalists.

In the most high-profile case, she successfully took investigative journalist Roberto Saviano to court for defamation.

In December 2020, Saviano — author of the bestselling book “Gomorrah” about the Naples mafia — had called her a “bastard” on national television for her hard line on migrants.

Last October, a court handed Saviano a suspended fine of 1,000 euros in the case. Meloni had sought 75,000 euros in damages.

In 2021, Meloni also sued two journalists from newspaper “Domani”, in a case that is due to begin in November.

It concerns an article alleging that she tried to use her influence to get a member of her party a job supplying Covid masks to Italy’s healthcare system.

Il Messaggero daily reported the height of Meloni as 1.63 metres, or five feet, three inches.

© Agence France-Presse

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