Poor but not criminal

In Italy,  the journalist who combines a picture of a beggar to an article about public safety commits the offense of defamation. This was recently decided by the Supreme Court, stating that the media have the obligation to obscure the faces, not only of homeless, but also of immigrants or Roma people, when they talk about crime and social evil. The fact of the matter concerns a news published in a newspaper of Trento, which was intended to gather the first impressions of the citizens in the aftermath of the approval of the so-called “security package“. An article which was not appreciated by the portrayed woman while she was begging. All this compounded, firstly, by the caption under the illustration: “A beggar at work in the old town“. And secondly, by a few sentences contained in the same article that referred to the relationship between begging and criminality, as an evil to eradicate in order to ensure the quiet life of the population.