Vitriolic incipit for Lilli Gruber to Half past eight. In the episode broadcast tonight, Monday 6 May 2024, the presenter opened the live broadcast of her talk show on La7 with a real broadside aimed at Enrico Mentana, like her, the leading face of the Cairo network as well as director of TgLa7. The object of Lilli’s anger is the delay with which Mentana closed the news and handed her the line. An “excess” of a handful of minutes received very badly by the journalist, who opened her program with a polemical outburst that immediately went viral. Here’s what happened.
Eight and a half, Lilli Gruber opens with controversy: Enrico Mentana in the crosshairs
It is 8.46pm when Mentana ends the Monday evening edition of his news program and switches the line to Otto e mezzo. There is a delay in the handover, however, it is not sensational, on the contrary, it is almost a norm on Mondays, when the news broadcast hosts the Gabanelli). Furthermore, in the past it happened that Mentana stayed on video even longer without any protest. This time, however, the episode of Eight and a Half is broadcast live (it is generally recorded a few hours before being broadcast on TV) to follow the latest updates arriving from the Middle East, which is why Lilli Gruber takes it badly and blurts out live against Mentana, too without naming it:
“Good evening and welcome to 8.46pm, not half past eight or half past eight, but incontinence is a bad thing. Sorry for this delay”
Gruber vs Mentana, the reasons for the stabbing
In his polemical message, Lilli therefore brings up the name of her program – Otto e mezzo – even if in reality for years now the program has not started at that time but has been moved about 10 minutes forward in the La7 schedule, a choice made by the top management of Cairo network precisely to give greater space and in-depth analysis to the evening news. So, how do you motivate the unexpected lunge of Lilli Gruber in Mentana? Probably the intolerance “exploded” tonight smoldered under the ashes for some time now, precisely because of “Mr. Fagnani’s” tendency to excessively extend the duration of his news program. The fact is that an outburst of this kind has not gone unnoticed and sounds like an alarm bell for La7, which certainly cannot afford “tense stories” among its champions in the information sector, even less so if the controversy starts from a program of the broadcaster itself.
The reaction of the web
Lilli Gruber’s manifest intolerance towards the “marathon runner” Mentana, obviously, was an all too tasty morsel for the people of the web, who went wild practically live commenting and making fun of the incident. The mood on social media, at first glance, seems to be equally divided between those who support Lilli’s reasons and those who instead support the director. Among the latter, there are those who observe: “Quite unpleasant, Mentana he was breaking important news”, or: “The situation in Gaza was hanging by a thread. Honestly I would look at one hundred Mentana rather than a Gruber”, and again: “Sorry Lilli if there is a war in the Middle East and the director of the network news is running 10 minutes”.
The counterpoint of the pro-Lilli party, however, is in turn very crowded. One user, for example, writes: “Excellent Lilli who opens half past eight with a nice big dick to the incontinent Mentana“. While a webnaut sympathizes with the journalist: “She is NOT registered and she was just right to appear annoyed.”
