“Only the informed peoples are free to choose.” It is interesting that To affirm this cornerstone, which is the basis of the contemporary pluralist democratic state, it is not a European constitutionalist, but Pope Leo XIV, the absolute monarch, even if elected, of a millennial institution That to put it with Ambrogio M. Piazzoni “has lasted for almost twenty centuries and is the most old of the existing institutions, being able to overcome the primates of duration of the series of the dynasties of the Egyptian pharaohs and the Chinese emperors”.
It happens a few weeks after the following statement referred to CNN, MSNBC and other unspecified newspapers: «They literally write 97.6% of negative things about me. (…). This must end. It must be illegal ». A phrase that would have been good in the mouth of a sovereign Ancien Régime European before the middle of the eighteenth century and who came out, and not from the Sen escape because it is desired like many others, to Donald Trump, president of what is boasting of being the greatest democracy in the world.
Also as Italy and the colored Hungary of the pale orange orange on the Scala of the Edex Press Freedom (The index that monitors the freedom of the press in the world, of reporters Sans Frontières. It is the color that indicates the problematic countriesin the index of freedom of information. A color common to immature democracies of Asia, Africa and Latin America, which should not have citizenship between the United States and the EU to 27, where instead it also colors Romania, Greece and Croatia. The reckless complaints, the journalists under escort, the attacks of power in public debates and also a lot of conflicts of interest, the concentration of too many means of communication in the same hands, which add economic power and political roles. The subdivision of the public service (themes well known also in Italy and never resolved).
If the general attack with media unwelcome, but also to individual journalists by power is a direct but flashy and therefore recognizable and critical way, other ways are subtleLi: they disagree the adequate information of public opinion, without the recipients realize it. One of these ways is the indiscriminate use of direct channels such as social networks, in which small and large political leaders say what they want without comparisondodging the public contradictory with the professionalism of the information.
Interesting is the fact that the risk that the risk that to undermine, all over the world and more and more access, to reliable information is also the factor of non -economic independence: making quality information, taking away resources makes everything more difficult, has been underlined in the Index 2025. The example of the cuts to funding for information information in the United States is made: “They represent an additional blow”, It reads in the RSF 2025 rapport, “for an average economy already weakened by the dominance that giants of technology such as Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft have on the dissemination of information”. It is true all over the world, but awareness is not the same: “These platforms, largely unregulated, are absorbing an ever -growing share of advertising revenues that would normally support journalism. Total expenditure for advertising through social media reached $ 247.3 billion in 2024, with an increase of 14% compared to 2023. These online platforms further hinder the information space by contributing to the spread of manipulated and misleading content, amplifying the disinformation “.
Faced with the enormous challenge of a public opinion informed in a world in which to distinguish the truth from the false it becomes every difficult day, requiring the individual an increasingly high critical sense threshold, A pope who looks forward has chosen to be called Leone XIV, by his own admission, recognizing in all this the contemporary industrial revolution and its complexity: “Today the Church,” he told Cardinals in the classroom of the Synod, “offers everyone his heritage of social doctrine to respond to another industrial revolution and the developments of artificial intelligence, which involve new challenges for the defense of human dignity, justice and work”.
Would it be too much to ask for the same awareness, the same responsibility, the same sensitivity to the secular leaders of institutions that present themselves as democrats, before democracies remain only the simulacrum of an empty shell dug from the inside?
