Pinocchio's heirs

By J.H. | ROME

“What are you laughing at?” asked the puppet, very confused and anxious at finding his nose growing so prodigiously.

“I am laughing at the lie you have told.”

“And how can you possibly know that I have told a lie?”

“Lies, my dear boy, are found out immediately...”

Not perhaps as immediately as the fairy who mocked Pinocchio (but still pretty swiftly) the fibs uttered by Italian politicians in the current general election campaign are being identified as such on a new, much-needed website. Pagella Politica, inspired by the American site, PolitiFact, came on-line last October thanks to a group of young graduates.

“Its success has gone beyond our expectations,” one of the team, Carlo Starace, told our correspondent. The latest figures showed Pagella Politica pulling in 80-90,000 unique users per month and notching up around a million page views, he said.

The site’s attraction is unsurprising since Italian politicians have for years been getting away with the most outrageous claims, largely undisturbed by the media. The restraint of Italy’s mainstream newspapers is a favourite target for the ex-comedian and founder of the Five Star Movement, Beppe Grillo (pictured above).

But who among the contenders for the leadership of the next government has the longest nose? A lot of voters would no doubt point to one Oscar Giannino, who last year set up a party to contest the election on a platform of economic liberalism. Polls had shown it making impressive headway, particularly in the north of Italy. But on February 18^th Mr Giannino was accused by the party’s co-founder of having lied about his academic achievements and in particular a Masters degree that he said he had obtained in Chicago. Mr Giannino, who said it was a mistake, resigned on February 20th.

Pagella Politica fact-checks campaign assertions and then ranks them on a scale from, vero (true) to panzana pazzesca (which roughly translates as ‘insane whopper’). On the basis of its classifications, it produces a percentage assessment for each politician.

The leader of Italy’s outgoing government, Mario Monti, emerges as the most truthful candidate with a 85% rating, but with his record besmirched by one ‘insane whopper’ comparing taxation under his predecessor Silvio Berlusconi with that during his own government and that of the centre-left leader Romano Prodi.

Pierluigi Bersani, the current leader of the centre-left, returns a still-respectable 71%. Further to the left, however, Antonio Ingroia, the leader of Civil Revolution, slumps to 53%, an embarrassing figure, and all the more so since Mr Ingroia is a state prosecutor who has made his name putting mafiosi behind bars.

Just who is the candidate for Mr Berlusconi’s People of Freedom (PdL) movement is unclear. The media proprietor agreed to stand aside as part of a deal that secured his party an alliance with the Northern League. It will come as no great surprise that Mr Berlusconi himself scores no better than Mr Ingroia. But his presumed successor-in-waiting, Angelino Alfano, is on 64%.

Neither Mr Berlusconi nor Mr Ingroia, however, is Italy’s most creative purveyor of political fantasy, according to Pagella Politica. That distinction goes to Mr Grillo (though he is not a candidate for the premiership). His score is a miserable 46%. Out of the 39 assertions that had been scrutinised by the website’s fact-checkers at the time of writing, no less than 11 were judged insane whoppers.

The unavoidable conclusion is that, in general, the politicians who have done best in the campaign—and there are predictions that Mr Grillo in particular is on the verge of a breakthrough—are those who have been most economical with the truth. While those like Mr Monti, whose chances seem to be ebbing by the day, are those who have tried to be honest.

A depressing conclusion. But not perhaps a surprising one.