Italian politics radio station on brink as M5S votes to pull funding

The closure of an Italian politics radio station looks set to go ahead after members of the Five Star Movement party (M5S) voted against renewing its funding, despite one MP going on hunger strike in an effort to save it.

Radio Radicale, which broadcasts debates and votes from the Italian parliament, has been under pressure from the anti-establishment populist M5S, which governs in coalition with the far-right League party and has frequently turned on journalists and the media.

Funding for the station plus the authorisation for it to broadcast live during parliamentary sessions was suspended on Tuesday by the parliamentary commission on budget and finance, in effect pulling the plug on the four-decades-old institution.

Related: Building the Brexit party: how Nigel Farage copied Italy's digital populists

The case has attracted strong opposition: Roberto Giachetti of the centre-left Democratic party (PD) was admitted to hospital on Monday on the 83rd hour of a hunger strike against the threatened closure.

Set up in 1975 as an offshoot of the Radical party but run independently since the party’s demise, the station was the first in Italy to exclusively cover politics. Completely free of commercial advertising, it broadcast parliamentary debates and court cases live.

“Italy could have buried half a century of our country’s history,” Alessio Falconio, the station’s editor-in-chief, told the Guardian. “More than a million records of the life of this country’s institutions are at risk being forgotten forever.”

Academics from the main Italian universities have called on the prime minister, Giuseppe Conte, to intervene and prevent the closure of the station, which used to receive about €10m (£8.8m) in public funding.

“We have never needed Radio Radicale as much as we do today,” the academics wrote in a letter addressed to Conte. “It is an instrument of knowledge and culture to help us avoid being overwhelmed by too much conflicting information, mixed in between what is true and what is false.”

An amendment to give Radio Radicale a six-month extension had received the support of the vast majority of Italian parties, including the League. However, the vote against it from M5S was decisive.

M5S has campaigned since its earliest days to cut public funding to publishers and radio stations including those linked to Italian political parties, which have almost all disappeared. Its leaders have previously called journalists “jackals” and “whores”.

The media undersecretary, Vito Crimi of M5S, said the broadcaster had provided a service for 25 years without having to go through any competitive tender or any “evaluation of the actual value of that service”.

An online petition in support of Radio Radicale has collected more than 160,000 signatures.

In a recent opinion piece in the Guardian, the Italian journalist and writer Roberto Saviano described the threats to the station as an affront against the values of liberal democracy.

“We still don’t know who or what should eventually replace Radio Radicale and the essential job it does,” he wrote. “This is the biggest emergency in Italy. It is becoming a country where it is increasingly difficult to publish information and where, if you criticise the government, you become a target.”

Falconio says he still hopes for a reprieve, although the chances of a U-turn are low.

A large portion of the station’s airtime is used to broadcast Italian political party conferences from both left and right. It also allows callers to say anything they want, without being censored.