Editorial bias

The Communist Party still holds some sway in Italy and some of its members are despairing that their beloved newspaper, L'Unita is probably going to be bought by the Angelucci family who own the right-wing tabloid Libero. At its peak, L'Unita sold 300,000 copies and its reporters in Moscow, Beijing and Havana had unrivalled access to the communist elite but after the collapse of the Berlin Wall it declined and shut down for most of 2001, on the verge of bankruptcy. Today its circulation is 50,000 and it has switched its allegiance to the Democratic Party whose leader, Walter Veltroni, the mayor of Rome, was once a communist and editor of the paper. Veltroni is campaigning to become Prime Minister of Italy. One advantage of owning a party newspaper in Italy is the eligibility for a E6.3m annual government subsidy so in theory there is no reason for the readership to be concerned that it might swing to the right under new ownership. However, the Democratic Party is a merger of two centre-left parties and the other party, the Catholic wing, also has a newspaper, Europa, so the question is which one of those will survive. Veltroni's background means the answer is clear.