CORIGLIANO-ROSSANO – The first and already announced appointment of the summer reading festival is approaching Authors of (A)sea. On Sunday 23 June at 7 pm, in the cloister of San Bernardino in the historic center of Rossano, the first meeting of the season will be held with the journalist and author Serena Bortone.
Bortone will present his first novel “To you close so sweet” in which he talks about a generation – his – who “discovers that they have never been as free as they made them believe”.
Rai’s stance against censorship
The journalist was recently at the center of the debate for publicly speaking out against Rai’s censorship of the writer Antonio Scurati. Scurati was supposed to read a text on April 25th during Bortone’s broadcast “Che Sara”. However, close to the episode, the author’s contract was terminated without providing plausible explanations other than those reported in an email which indicated the cancellation for “editorial reasons”. Bortone then reported the incident live by reading the full text provided by Scurati himself.
A defense whose motivations turned out to be well-founded since the gesture cost her the cancellation of the program “What will be” from the schedules for next autumn.
The affair has brought to light – and confirmed – the climate of censorship that is increasingly affecting the world of information. The inability to manage and accept dissent on the part of the current political and institutional structure places journalism and information as a whole faced with a serious and worrying problem of limiting freedom of expression.
This is what is happening in Italy today, but if we look at Europe we realize that the situation is not so reassuring. Just yesterday, in fact, the Slovak Prime Minister, Robert Fico, approved the closure of state TV and radio. It is therefore undeniable that the health of freedom of the press and expression is threatened by hostile winds.
The denial of rights occurs gradually: today you lose the first conquest, tomorrow the second and so on. It is therefore essential not to let our guard down, keeping our attention high on the topic, and not minimizing the attempts made by those in power to intimidate and limit the freedom of individuals to express their dissent. Declassifying these episodes to mere editorial choices by constructing a counter-narrative that ridicules and underestimates what happened is extremely dangerous, for individuals and for the stability of democracy.
