Media: one in five articles paints a negative picture of Southern Italy

One in five articles takes a negative tone towards Southern Italy. This is not merely a perception, but the finding of a study entitled ‘(Mis)reported News: Journalism and the Narrative of the South: Between Stereotypes and Prejudices’, commissioned by the Campania Journalists’ Union in collaboration with the Department of Social Sciences at the University of Naples Federico II, the Institute of Media and Journalism at the University of Italian Switzerland and the European Journalism Observatory.

The study tells us that, of the 278 articles analysed covering the period from 1 February to 31 August 2020, 21 per cent had a negative tone when covering topics relating to southern Italia, whilst 54 per cent were classified as neutral and only 25 per cent had a positive tone.

But the problem – as the research emphasises – is not limited to overtly discriminatory expressions, since even where these are absent, one can easily detect a narrative that tends to associate the South with concepts such as fragility, backwardness, inefficiency and dependence, and the North with efficiency, productivity, innovation and the ability to drive the country forward. ‘Stereotypes,’ the study states, ‘can become entrenched through seemingly neutral words, metaphors, comparisons and representations. One of the phenomena identified is the ‘naturalisation of the divide’: the differences between the North and the South are described as historical, geographical or even atavistic, thereby risking the transformation of inequalities—which are also determined by political, institutional and economic choices—into seemingly inevitable conditions.”

“Journalism bears a huge responsibility in shaping public opinion, and for this very reason the profession must also examine the racism that exists within our country,” says Claudio Silvestri, deputy general secretary of the FNSI. According to Stefano Bory, professor of the Sociology of Cultural and Communication Processes in the Department of Social Sciences at Federico II University, it is ‘entirely legitimate to argue that there is a long-standing, latent persistence of stereotyping and prejudice against southern Italia’ even within the ‘journalistic subconscious’ of the national press. The research, he explains, reveals traces of this latent phenomenon and opens up new perspectives on how the ‘Southern question’ is addressed, in a professional debate still characterised by differing positions ranging from the denial to the condemnation of prejudice.