After 22 years the Foreign Press Association has moved out of its headquarters in Via dell’Umiltà, or Humility Street, a stone’s throw from the Trevi Fountain, and will begin a new chapter at swank premises in the former apartment of the late media mogul Silvio Berlusconi in the Palazzo Grazioli next to Piazza Venezia. 

 It is certainly ironic that the Italian government, after long discussions, generously has made available the piano nobile where Berlusconi once entertained the likes of Patrizia D’Addario, the escort girl who recorded her night of love with the premier with a concealed microphone and subsequently wrote a book about her experiences. 

 Although Berlusconi provided endless news items for journalists he could not be described as a friend of the foreign media, who he considered to be mainly communists, and on the one occasion that he gave a press conference in the Association’s previous premises in the via della Mercede, he stormed out after Wolf Achtner of ABC news asked the mogul to clarify why he had joined the illegal P2 masonic lodge that was dissolved as a threat to Italy’s open society.   

 The cavaliere might likely turn in his grave if he knew that his famous bed donated by his friend Vladimir Putin could be used by reporters who need to stay in the palazzo overnight during urgent breaking news. 

 Nevertheless it is a measure of the continuing importance that Italian politicians and civil servants give to the image of Italy abroad that successive governments have continued to support the association even while not always receiving favourable reporting from foreign press club members. Even the maverick Five Star party, whose comedian founder has a visceral hatred for the media, stopped short of severing the relationship, meaning that Rome-based foreign correspondents enjoy probably the best facilities of their kind in Europe, if not the world. 

 While the history of the club goes back to 1911, it was Benito Mussolini who oversaw its expansion, understanding as a former newspaper editor the importance of newspapers as well as the advantages to the state of keeping foreign reporters in one location so that they could be spied upon. 

 Italy has of course long since given up spying overtly on foreign reporters but has slipped down the international press freedom index in recent years due to intimidation of reporters by the mafia and organized crime as well as due to the antiquated defamation law whereby libel is still a criminal offense, punishable in theory with a prison sentence. Investigations into the murder of Italian colleagues by the mob in recent decades all too often have not identified those responsible. 

 While celebrating our access to such very useful new working premises, we should not forget the plight of our courageous colleagues in the trenches in Sicily, Naples or Ostia where too often a reporter risks death threats, a beating or judicial harassment, sometimes with scant support from local authorities. 

jp & jlb