When Italians receive official information — a corporate announcement, a regulatory update, an institutional communication — they typically cross-reference it with what trusted personal contacts say before acting on it. This is not cynicism; it is experience-based wisdom. Formal channels in Italy have historically been incomplete, inconsistent, or disconnected from how things actually work.
The informal channel — a conversation with a trusted colleague, a tip from a well-connected friend, word through a personal network — provides context, nuance, and practical assessment that official communications usually lack. The best-informed Italians operate in both channels: they read the official documents and then call someone they trust to find out what those documents actually mean in practice.
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