Slap the Monster on Page One

Slap the Monster on Page One (Italian: Sbatti il mostro in prima pagina) is a 1972 Italian drama film directed by Marco Bellocchio.

It depicts the daily life of a fictitious Italian daily newspaper, Il Giornale (The Journal). The newspaper caters to a conservative, fascist, bourgeois readership, and its chief-editor Bizanti tries in all manners to give a right-wing slant even to the most trivial news items, while at the same time sweetening and desensitizing the thornier issues, such as unemployment and police brutality. The whole editorial staff is thrown in a tantrum when a young girl is found raped and killed, going as far as soliciting nostalgia for the death penalty (capital punishment was abolished in Italy in the wake of the fall of Italian Fascism) and to actually derail the investigation, leading the police to a false culprit: a young left-wing student, who becomes the 'ideal' scapegoat for the newspaper's prejudiced readership. The movie, a searing J'Accuse…! on the perils of press manipulation, closes with no happy ending in sight, with public opinion totally mesmerized by Bizanti and his cronies for the satisfaction of their backers and financers.

Two years after the movie's distribution, a right-wing newspaper called Il Giornale was actually started in Italy by Indro Montanelli.