The writer Antonio Scurati, known for a successful trilogy about the dictator Benito Mussolini, had to go on Saturday to a program of Rai, the Italian public television, to read a monologue on the occasion of the commemoration of the liberation of Italy of the Nazi occupation, on April 25. But Scurati never got to go to the program Chesarà…, hosted by presenter Serena Bortone. It was she herself who explained on her social networks that the writer’s participation in the small screen had been canceled with less than 24 hours to go.
“It was with dismay, and by pure chance, that I learned last night that Scurati’s contract had been terminated. I haven’t been able to get any plausible explanations,” Bortone wrote on social media.
The presenter ended up reading Scurati’s monologue in her program, which was also published by all the Italian media yesterday. The author of M. The son of the century accused Brothers of Italy, the party of the prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, of being “a post-fascist ruling group”; and the president, for never denying Mussolini’s crimes and for not recognizing the Resistance movement in Italy.
Despite the fact that Rai’s director of content, Paolo Corsini, justified in a statement that the reasons for the suspension of the monologue were economic – he cited a contract with figures “higher than expected” -; and then Meloni counterattacked by publishing the text and declaring herself opposed to any kind of censorship, the episode is just the last straw in some important tectonic movements in the Italian media landscape. According to the prime minister, who said she did not know the truth, Rai’s version is that “she had simply refused to pay 1,800 euros (the monthly salary of many workers) for a minute of monologue”.
The opposition quickly raised its voice accusing the Government of censoring intellectuals. “Eliminating the intervention of a great writer for political reasons is unacceptable, undignified. This happens in Russia and cannot happen in a European country”, denounced the leader of the centrist party Action, Carlo Calenda. Just this week it became known that an elderly historian will be tried in Bari for having called Meloni “neo-Nazi” and “stupid” when he was leader of the opposition.
The Scurati episode is not isolated. Unions of public television journalists have been protesting for weeks what they describe as a sweeping control of the government’s majority over public media. The workers have declared a five-day strike criticizing that they have become the “megaphone of the parties”. The presenters of the Rai news, in fact, read a statement in which they protested new regulations that seek to guarantee the equal presence of politicians on their stations during this election campaign before the European elections. Specifically, they complain that Rainews24, the 24-hour Rai channel, will be able to broadcast the meetings of the political parties directly, without the mediation of any journalist, a protest that has reached the European Commission with a complaint from the European Green Party. “This is not our idea of ??public service, where at the center is the work of journalists who ask questions (even uncomfortable ones), verify what is said, point out inconsistencies”, they assured.
The Rai case is not the only one that generates controversy. In these perfect storm days, the eyes are also on the more than seventy journalists who work at the AGI agency, the second news agency in the country, which is about to be sold to Antonio Angelucci’s media conglomerate, which not only he is a businessman with important interests in the world of health and tourism, but he is also a parliamentarian of the League, one of the parties in the right-wing coalition that supports the Government.
The operation is extremely delicate due to the potential conflict of interest it may involve. In a media landscape already largely controlled by Mediaset, owned by the Berlusconi family – which also owns Forza Italia, the other political party in the government majority – AGI is not just any other medium, but the current owner is the energy ENI. Its founder was, in 1950, the president of ENI, Enrico Mattei, and it is now controlled by the Italian State: the Ministry of Economy is the company’s main shareholder with more than 30% of the shares . Currently the Minister of the Economy is the lawyer Giancarlo Giorgetti, and it is he who in the end could have the last word on the sale – even if he has assured that he does not have a decision-making power on this issue – to a politician of his own formation. “I love my job, and what scares me is not being able to do it as I have until now. What is a journalist if he can’t write the truth but what his editor tells him”, said, excitedly, the political journalist of AGI Serenella Ronda before a group of correspondents.
“Controlling information gives power, and there is an attempt by this Government, or the area of ??the government majority, to have a network of newspapers and primary information to make a different narrative about what is happening in Italy” , denounced the general secretary of the Italian National Press Federation (FNSI), Alessandra Costante. “We are approaching Hungary with great strides. Italy is undergoing a process of urbanisation”, he insisted.
Meloni, who was the first to say in electoral campaigns that she intends to free Italy from the cultural hegemony of the left – which she defines as “a hegemony of power” -, has also seen this week as one of the faces Rai’s most loved ones, Amadeus, the popular presenter of the Sanremo festival, was leaving public television to start a private project. Although he has not explained why, there have been some media that have pointed out that he had been asked to invite figures close to the governing majority. He is the last of a series of exodus stars from what the opposition has already dubbed “TeleMeloni”.
