Among the many judiciary scandals affecting Silvio Berlusconi, the Mills' case is perhaps the most directly followed by the British media. This is because the alleged corruption involved a British lawyer, who was also a Minister’s husband. However reporters of Fleet Street are so interested in it for reasons which go beyond the need to talk about the judicial misadventures abroad of a British citizen. Corruption is an illness which, for many good reasons, the British traditionally like to leave to the Italians, in that mixture of admiration, surprise and outrage which characterises their attitude towards the Belpaese. Since the Mills case puts on a similar level a British and an Italian citizen, disconcert for this anomaly generates attention which is a fundamental element for the production of articles. This week’s Economist, a weekly which has no abundance of space for all the stories it could potentially discuss, has a piece on the latest developments of the case, which he sees as confirming the old view of Italy as “the land of impunity”.

The recent events, it is worth recalling, concern the final decision by the Italian Supreme Court over the case. David Mills was accused of accepting money from Silvio Berlusconi to lie in one of the trials involving the Prime Minister. The judgement by the Supreme Court stated that the trial had ended because of the statute of limitation. Too long had passed from when the episode of corruption had occurred. Hence, even if there was no evidence that the accusations to Mills were misplaced, the British lawyer was set free. The trial of Berlusconi, which is separate from the one to Mills, will go ahead for another year or so, before coming to an end because of the same statute of limitation.

The decision by the Supreme Court has caused a further source of controversy because of the way it was reported in the Italian media. TG1, the main Italian news, now edited by the right-leaning Augusto Minzolini, opened one of his editions the day after the decision by the Court stating that Mills had been absolved. This is factually wrong, as he was not jailed only because of the statute of limitation, which is different from being absolved.

A petition launched on Facebook has collected hundreds of thousands of signatures, and the body overseeing Italian journalists is now looking into the case. This is not the first time Minzolini is severely criticised by supporters of the opposition. In the past, he has been caught in other controversies such as the one following his editorial defending Craxi, and that over the decision not to report on the Berlusconi sex scandals as soon as they emerged.

However, this last one seems to be a different step from the previous two. In those cases, the editor was expressing his own views over an event, or choosing whether a fact deserved to be reported or not.  Both aspects are part of the discretion of being an editor, which can and should be criticised when it goes too far, but should still be accepted as such. Lying on the reporting of a fact is going a step too far. The credibility of TG1, the professionalism of his journalists and the licence fee paying audience deserve better than that.