It is around half past four in the afternoon on Wednesday 6 May, when a post appears on the Tg1 Instagram page – like almost every newspaper, now a separate information platform, where news can be launched and relaunched following the logic of the algorithm – a post appears destined to overturn the homepage, evening editions of the news and television program lineups.

Exclusive. Garlasco, Sempio intercepted: “I saw the video of Chiara and Alberto”. It is the main public TV news program that disclosed the news of the wiretaps in the hands of investigators who for a year have been investigating Andrea Sempio, a 38-year-old from Vigevano, a friend of the brother of the victim, Chiara Poggi, killed in August 2007. Murder for which her then boyfriend Alberto Stasi has been in prison since 2015, definitively sentenced by the Supreme Court to 16 years, after two acquittals. A circumstantial trial which, according to the Pavia Prosecutor’s Office – which reopened the investigation – would have convicted an innocent man.

A few minutes later another post arrives, again highlighted with the word “exclusive” in red: “Garlasco, Chiara a Sempio: I don’t want to talk to you”. And yet another: “Here’s the motive: the video, the infatuation, the rejection.” We have to wait for the 8pm edition of the news to see the report on the audio interceptions which, again according to the investigators, would frame Sempio and which Tg1 – he is keen to point out once again – “exclusively anticipated”, triggering a rebound of indiscretions and new accusations which are going to further weigh down a trial which for the moment is only media-related, against a suspect for whom the presumption of innocence. But in the pursuit of exclusivity, the border between guaranteeism and freedom of the press is often torn apart. So much so that the news of the interceptions was anticipated on social media – all still to be verified, but above all to be countered by the defense – to beat the others to the punch.

The exclusive first of all (and everyone)

Without going into the very crowded merits of the news story, the reflections to be made are different. The first is on the continuous leak of information regarding the new investigations – with all due respect to investigative secrecy -, culminating with the wiretaps ending up in the hands of journalists even before a possible hearing. The second is on the wild use of wiretaps, immediately fed to public opinion, without being contextualised, explored or objected to. And the fact that Tg1 was the first to ride the wave, even entrusting the scoop to social media, makes us reflect even more on the state of health of information and the media in general.

Not to mention, then, the morbid details about Sempio which have been filling TV lounges and newspaper pages for months, and which add nothing to the possible motive, but only muck on the image of a man formally investigated – not charged -, fueling indignation, which in this media circus seems to prevail over the search for the truth.

If justice did not and continues not to make a good impression on the Garlasco case, the media (mass and social media) are certainly not doing any better.