Italy’s artistic and intellectual elite was in open revolt yesterday against Silvio Berlusconi’s moves to sue at least three newspapers at home and abroad. More than 120,000 people have signed an online petition defending press freedom.

Umberto Eco, perhaps the country’s leading writer, Dario Fo, the playwright, and Roberto Saviano, author of Gomorrah, the bestseller about the Naples Mafia, were among those signing the petition, started by La Repubblica. The paper is being sued for questioning the Prime Minister’s behaviour and private life.

Mr Eco said: “When someone has to intervene to defend freedom of the press it means that the society, and with it a great part of the press itself, is already sick.” He added that in robust democracies there was no need to defend press freedom “because it enters nobody’s mind to limit it”.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article6816390.ece