Italian leftist paper journalists strike over sale

Journalists at one of Italy's leading dailies, La Repubblica, went on strike on Friday over the possible sale of their newspaper to a Greek company.

The leftist newspaper belongs to the Gedi publishing house along with the centrist La Stampa, the website HuffPost Italia and Radio Deejay.

La Stampa journalists, who went on strike on Thursday, said in a statement that Gedi's owner, Italian billionaire John Elkann, was in advanced talks to sell Gedi to Antenna, a media group set up by late Greek magnate Minos Kyriakou.

"We are ready for a season of tough struggles to defend our workers' rights and the identity of our newspaper against the sale of our group to a foreign company with no experience in an already complex Italian media landscape," La Repubblica's journalists said in a statement.

Opposition leader Elly Schlein, head of the centre-left Democratic Party, said she was "extremely worried by the risk of a weakening or dismantling of a fundamental bastion of democracy".

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni's hard-right government held talks with staff and management representatives on Friday but has so far not intervened in the dispute.