Italian Newspaper Threatened Over Coverage of UN Food Agency
Legal disputes and institutional tensions erupt over controversial media stories.
ROME — A small but influential English-language news site in Rome has been exposing corruption at a United Nations agency based there.
And the Italian Insider has paid a high price: It now needs to raise up to 85,000 euros to pay a legal settlement, having lost all its appeals.
Although still publishing, the fear is it may go out of business. (In his current page, Phillips continues to raise money to pay his legal fees.)
The initial lawsuit brought by the UN Food & Agriculture Organization (FAO) was designed to bankrupt and silence a British-born journalist at the , the only English-language newspaper in the country owned by John Phillips.
Italian Insider Editor John Phillips holding a newspaper of his publication. Phillips was charged for defamation of the UN FAO by an Italian court. (COURTESY/JOHN PHILLIPS)
The case was brought by FAO director general Jose Graziano da Silva and Bocconi University lecturer Vicenzo Morabito. Both claimed the newspaper editor tarnished the group’s reputation in 2017. The trial began in 2018.
Phillips has repeatedly denied allegations of libel. The FAO had accused him of defamation and publishing false stories.
Reporters Without Borders publicly condemned the lawsuits as “vexatious cases.”
An Italian tribunal found Phillips liable for defamation in his reporting of the FAO, alleging corruption and nepotism at the agency. Accusations included fraudulent consulting contracts and rigging procurement systems.
The publication’s FAO stories also included accounts from insiders and whistleblowers detailing suspicious activity and reports of sexual harassment in other FAO offices, mainly in the Middle East, according to Phillips’ sources.
Phillips also claimed da Silva was anti-Western, unfriendly to donors of the FAO. Da Silva had previously served in the Lulu da Silva administration in the 2000s as an Extraordinary Ministry for Food Security.
“The FAO brings money to Rome,” said Phillips about his reporting. “They want to protect the relationship among the Italian state, the Italian government, the Italian establishment, and the UN because the FAO is a good thing.”
The FAO was in a leadership transition when Phillips published his investigative stories. Da Silva’s term as head of the UN FAO ended in July 2019.
A brief history: In 2018, an Italian court ordered Phillips to pay da Silva 90,000 euros. Morabito demanded 130,000 euros in civil damages in defamation over an article the Insider republished from the Italian publication Il Fatto Quotidiano, alleging Morabito’s links to organized crime.
“Italian authorities argued that we weren’t registered as a credible newspaper,” said Phillips about Italian authorities attempts to discredit him. “The judge said that online newspapers have freedom of press. Italy has been slipping in freedom of the press.”
Italian law criminalizes journalists for libel and defamation under Article 595 of the Italian criminal code.
The case went on for years.
In 2018, Phillips was to be sentenced for three years in prison under the criminal libel laws, but he appealed the conviction. In 2021, jail time was reduced to a fine and civil damages. A year later, Italy’s Supreme Court rejected Phillips’ final appeal against the conviction, adding financial penalties. In 2025, a Rome judge threw out separate criminal charges filed by another FAO executive.
“As a result of exposing arrests and corruption, there’s these kinds of plastic things that exist in these agencies,” said Phillips in his reports from his sources. “The FAO has to go through the United Nations Internal Disciplinary system, which works through the UN tribunals based in Geneva under the auspices of the International Labor Organization.”
The United States is currently the biggest donor to the FAO, spending $4 billion in 2024-2025. Phillips said the agency starting firing Americans at the beginning of President Donald Trump’s second term.
Despite legal travails, Phillips hasn’t curtailed his muckraking. The Italian Insider’s May 22 issue accused the FAO of quid pro quo hiring.
In May, Phillips also launched the LVIV Insider, www.lvivinsider.com, to report on Ukraine.