In Benevento, a local political dispute has become a debate about journalism itself. According to NTR24, criticism of the local press during a political meeting involving Umberto Del Basso De Caro and Pasquale Viespoli included references to allegedly "strumental" publishers, prompting the outlet to defend the idea that journalists and publishers should not be forced into political alignment.
NTR24 frames the episode through what psychologists call the "hostile media effect": the tendency for people on opposite sides of a dispute to look at the same coverage and conclude that it favors the other side.
It is important to be clear about what is established here. The NTR24 piece is an authored commentary. The meeting, the statements attributed to the two former parliamentarians, and the alleged attack on the press were not independently corroborated in the sources available for this article. What can be explained independently is the psychological framework NTR24 invokes — and why it often appears in heated local debates.
What NTR24 is arguing
NTR24 presents the Benevento controversy as involving criticism of local media and describes the local debate using the symbolic opposition of the "Rosa Bianca" and the "Rosa Rossa."
The outlet's central claim is normative rather than factual: journalism should not be required to choose a political camp. In its account, pressure on editors and reporters to demonstrate loyalty — to one political area or the other — misunderstands the role of independent reporting.
The available sources do not independently verify the article's broader claims about the history of political polarization or press freedom in Benevento, nor the exact wording or context of the statements attributed at the meeting.
The hostile media effect, explained
The hostile media effect describes a situation in which opposing partisans perceive the same coverage as unfairly favoring the opposing side.
The phenomenon was first demonstrated in published research by Robert P. Vallone, Lee Ross and Mark R. Lepper in 1985. In that study, supporters of opposing sides viewed identical television coverage and each side judged it as biased against its own position. The researchers attributed the result partly to cognitive and perceptual mechanisms, not simply to deliberate distortion by journalists.
Later research has continued to describe the hostile media effect as the tendency for partisans to evaluate media content as biased against their positions. Research links these perceptions to biased evaluation, selective perception or recall, and the intensity of a person's involvement in a disputed issue. In other words, the more deeply someone cares about an outcome, the more likely they are to read neutral or mixed coverage as hostile.
That does not prove that any particular dispute — including the one in Benevento — is an instance of the effect. The psychological literature supports the general framework; it does not establish how it applies to this local case.
Why local news disputes feel so personal
National controversies can feel distant. Local coverage is different: readers often know the places, officials, editors and publishers involved. That closeness can intensify involvement, which research identifies as one factor associated with hostile-media perceptions.
NTR24's use of the "Rosa Bianca" versus "Rosa Rossa" imagery captures that dynamic. When local politics is read as a contest between two camps, every editorial choice — which meeting to cover, which quotation to foreground, which background to include — can be interpreted as a signal of allegiance.
This is also why accusations about publishers being "strumental" carry weight. They shift the argument from whether a specific fact was correct to whom the outlet supposedly serves. That kind of broad judgment is easier to make, and harder to test, than a claim about a single error.
How to test a claim of bias
A useful finding from a 2021 study is that evaluating specific elements of a report while keeping the text available can produce lower perceptions of bias than making only a broad judgment about the article. Reviewing specific evidence, in that account, can reduce broad and unsupported perceptions of bias. Deeper, evidence-based evaluation was reported to reduce perceived bias.
Readers in Benevento — or anywhere else — can apply that distinction without taking sides in advance:
- Start with the specific piece. Keep the article, broadcast or post open while judging it, rather than relying on memory or on how it was described afterward.
- Separate facts from framing. Ask what verifiable facts the report contains, which sources are named, what each source actually said, and what is missing. A disagreement about emphasis is not the same as proof of partisan intent.
- Check both perceptions. The hostile media effect predicts that opposing partisans may each see the same coverage as biased against their own side. If both camps complain about the same report, that pattern alone does not settle whether the report was unfair.
None of these steps resolves whether the criticisms voiced in Benevento were justified. They only make the question more precise: which report, which passage, which omission, and what evidence would correct it.
What remains unverified
The core of the NTR24 commentary is a defense of journalistic independence: reporters and publishers should be judged on the accuracy and fairness of their work, not on their willingness to align politically.
Whether the recent Benevento episode fits the hostile-media pattern cannot be determined from the sources available here. No independent source confirmed the identities, wording or context of the statements attributed to the two former parliamentarians, and the broader historical claims in the commentary remain unverified.
What the research does support is more modest but still useful. When politics is polarized, even careful coverage can be experienced as hostile. Recognizing that tendency does not excuse real errors or real pressure on journalists — but it can help readers distinguish between a demonstrated mistake and the familiar feeling that the press must be against them.
