An Italian court has ordered a journalist to pay €5,000 in damages to the prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, for mocking her height over social media in what was defined as “body shaming”.
Giulia Cortese, a journalist based in Milan, was also given a suspended fine of €1,200 over the jibe, which dated back to October 2021, a year before Meloni’s far-right coalition government came to power.
The pair clashed after Cortese, 36, published a mocked-up photo of Meloni with the fascist dictator Benito Mussolini in the background on Twitter, now X. In reaction, Meloni wrote on Facebook that the “falsified photo” was of “unique gravity” and that she had instructed her lawyer to pursue legal action against the journalist.
In two further tweets on the same day, Cortese wrote messages that translate as: “The media pillory you created on your Facebook page qualifies you for what you are: a little woman,” and “You don’t scare me, Giorgia Meloni. After all, you’re only 1.2 metres (4 ft) tall. I can’t even see you.”
Cortese was acquitted over the tweet comparing Meloni to Mussolini, but convicted of defamation over the latter two, which the Milan judge said amounted to “body shaming”.
Cortese said that being convicted over a “joke phrase” was “scandalous”. “There’s [a] climate of persecution. I don’t feel I have the freedom any more to write about this government, because once you are identified as an inconvenient journalist for this government, they don’t let anything pass,” Cortese told the Guardian.
Cortese can appeal but is undecided about whether to do so. “Going ahead with it risks costing me a lot, and I don’t know how it would end,” she said.
Meloni’s lawyer said she would donate the €5,000 to charity when a definitive sentence was confirmed and the money was paid.
According to various Italian news outlets, Meloni is 1.63 metres (5ft 3in) tall.
It is not the first time she has taken legal action against a journalist or someone who has criticised her publicly. Since coming to power, her government has been accused of making strategic use of defamation suits to silence journalists and public intellectuals.
In a high-profile case last autumn, the anti-mafia writer Roberto Saviano was found guilty of libelling Meloni and fined €1,000 for calling her “a bastard” over her migration policies. The case dated back to a TV interview in December 2020 in which Saviano, author of the bestselling book Gomorrah, castigated Meloni and her fellow far-right leader Matteo Salvini on TV over their vitriol towards charity-run ships rescuing people in the Mediterranean.
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Meloni is also suing the Palestinian journalist Rula Jebreal, who has Italian and Israeli citizenship, over a tweet dating from September 2022. In addition, Jebreal is being sued by Fabio Rampelli, a politician from Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party, and vice-president of the lower house of parliament, over a tweet in January.
Meloni’s government has been accused of exerting its influence over the state broadcaster, Rai, and other Italian media. In April, Rai came under fire for alleged censorship after the abrupt cancellation of an anti-fascist monologue that was due to be read by the author Antonio Scurati.
Meloni attacked Scurati on social media while accusing the left of “crying at the regime”.