The writer Antonio Scurati, known for a successful trilogy about the dictator Benito Mussolini, was due to attend a program on Rai, Italian public television, this Saturday to read a monologue on the occasion of the commemoration of the liberation of Italy from the Nazi occupation. , this coming April 25th. But Scurati never got to go to the CheSarà program, hosted by presenter Serena Bortone. It was she herself who explained on her social networks that the writer’s participation on the small screen had been canceled less than 24 hours later.
“With dismay, and by pure chance, I learned last night that Scurati’s contract had been terminated. “I have not been able to obtain plausible explanations,” Bortone wrote on social media.
The presenter ended up reading Scurati’s monologue on her program, which was also published yesterday by all the Italian media. The author of M. The Son of the Century accused the Brothers of Italy, the party of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, of being “a post-fascist leading group”; and the president for never having denied Mussolini’s crimes and for not recognizing the Resistance movement in Italy.
Although Rai’s content director, 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 himself against any type of censorship, the episode is just the last straw that breaks the camel’s back 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 employees) for one minute of monologue.”
The opposition has 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 Action party, Carlo Calenda. Just this week it became known that an elderly historian will be tried in Bari for having called Meloni a “neo-Nazi” and a “moron” when he was leader of the opposition.
The Scurati episode is not isolated. The unions of public television journalists have been protesting for weeks against what they define as exhaustive control by the government majority over the public media. The employees have declared a five-day strike, criticizing having become the “megaphone of the parties.” The Rai news presenters, in fact, read a statement in which they protested new regulations that aim to guarantee the fair presence of politicians on their stations during this electoral campaign before the European elections. Specifically, they denounce that Rainews24, Rai’s 24-hour channel, will be able to broadcast political party rallies directly, without the mediation of any journalist, a protest that has reached the European Commission thanks to a complaint from the Green Party. European. “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 said.
The Rai case is not the only one that generates controversy. Eyes are also focused these days of perfect storm 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 is not only a businessman with important interests in the world of health and tourism, but also happens to be a parliamentarian for 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 that it may imply. In a media landscape already largely controlled by Mediaset, owned by the Berlusconi family – which also has Forza Italia, the other political party of the government majority –, AGI is not just any other media outlet, but the current owner is the energy company 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 main shareholder of the company with more than 30% of the shares. Currently the Minister of Economy is the league member Giancarlo Giorgetti, and it is he who in the end could have the last word on the sale – although he has assured that he does not have decision-making power on this matter – to a politician of the same party. “I love my job, and what scares me is not being able to do it as I have done until now. “What is a journalist if he cannot write the truth except what his editor tells him,” Agi political journalist Serenella Ronda said, excitedly, before a group of correspondents.
“Controlling information gives power, and there is an attempt by this Government, or by the government majority area, 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 National Federation of the Italian Press (FNSI) Alessandra Costante. “We are getting closer to Hungary in big steps. “Italy is undergoing a process of orbanization,” she insisted.
Meloni, 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 most beloved faces of Rai, Amadeus, the popular presenter of the Sanremo festival, was leaving public television to go to a private project. Although he has not explained why, some media outlets suggest that he had been asked to invite figures close to the government majority. He is the latest in a series of stars in exodus from what the opposition has already baptized with the name “TeleMeloni.”
