“The activity of the Hyenas cannot be qualified as journalism, neither from a substantial point of view nor from a formal point of view”. This was stated by the Order of Journalists of Lombardy, which faced with some statements by Pier Silvio Berlusconi “he deemed it necessary to write to the CEO of Mediaset Italia to underline the difference between authentically journalistic activity and other forms of communication and to invite him to take at least a first, formal step towards regularizing the situation”.
The Order’s position was born in relation to the case of Robert Zaccaria, 64, found dead after voluntarily ingesting drugs. The man, residing in a town in the province of Forlì, had ended up at the center of a service of the Italia 1 broadcast ‘Le Iene’: it all started from the case of a young man, Daniele, who had in turn committed suicide a year ago , after learning that what he believed to be his girlfriend, met online and with whom he had exchanged about 8,000 messages for a year, was actually the 64-year-old who had made fun of him.
“Talking about the work of the Hyenas regarding the events of Roberto Zaccaria and the 24-year-old Daniele as a journalistic work is wrong from a substantial and formal point of view, and it would also be wrong abroad where there is no Order but they are everywhere active organizations that perform similar functions”, writes the president of the Lombard Order Riccardo Sorrentino. And he adds, “because that infotainment method, in that service – and, I’m sorry to say, also on several other occasions – has been pushed to extremes that are not compatible with any healthy mode of communication and does not respect the canons of Italian journalism and international”.