An earthquake never seen before in the corridors of Saxa Rubra. Today in RAI we don’t talk about anything else and it will probably be like this for a long time to come, because it is one unprecedented historical turning point. The strike of RAI journalists called yesterday by USIGRAI it was a flop. The organizers said they had 75% participation: even if that were true, it means that they themselves are certifying no longer have control of 25% of journalists on national public television. This epochal turnaround it is due to the internal revolution among RAI journalists: in November, just six months ago, a new union called YOU WILL UNITE and led by the secretary Francesco Palese, Salento journalist for Rai News. And now this new union is opposed to the historic one that held the monopoly. “It is the first time that a strike does not block the broadcast of state TV news and programs ” he explains to StrettoWeb Giuseppe MalaraRAI journalist who is from Reggio Calabria.
“We broke a wall. Since yesterday, Rai has been freer”. Radiant like all his colleagues – almost 350 – who in just a few months have already joined UNIRAI, Malara rejoices with an eloquent photo on social media (we publish it to accompany the article), fueling enthusiasm around this real revolution of freedom on state television. “In RAI we have always had only one union, USIGRAI, clearly left-wing: the majority of RAI journalists are culturally aligned to the left, not politically. The secretary of USIGRAI today is Daniele Macheda, also from Reggio Calabria. Over the years we have tried to oppose ourselves, first with a trade union acronym that was born as an internal component and was called ‘Pluralism and Freedom’ founded with Gennaro Sangiuliano, now Minister of Culture, and with Paolo Orsini in 2018. We ran as candidates for the USIGRAI Congress of Bologna with our price list. We have elected a couple of members to the Executive and over the years we have had the first historic opposition battles against the single thought and the monopoly of the left in RAI“.
The current director of Tg5 Clemente Mimum, who knows RAI very well, in the past said that when the left is in government the right is the minority. When the right is in government, the left is the opposition exercised through USIGRAI. It is still so?
“I just know – he replies Malara – which with the advent of the new governance USIGRAI began to act as a real political entity, and a good group of free-minded people thought about moving away and tearing up with the ambition of founding a new union. An improvident, risky idea, unthinkable until recently. Creating the new union was very difficult, also because in Italy union representation for journalists until recently was exclusive to the FNSI alone”, and USIGRAI is a group of FNSI. But it was precisely in that historical period that FIGEC was born Carlo Parisi (and let’s go back to our Reggio). “The initial dialogue between Unirai and Figec was complex but the closeness was evident. I and other Rai journalists are members of the national management of Figec”.
Malara he knows the mechanisms of politics on state television very well: “They tell us that we are right-wing, but that’s not true. It’s exactly the opposite: they are the ones who are too left-wing. In UNIRAI there are journalists who vote left, who vote for the Democratic Party, who vote for moderate parties such as Action or Italia Viva. As usual, they accuse others of what they themselves represent. USIGRAI has always done this! It professes to be democratic and a champion of rights but, essentially, it suppresses dissent and silences it”. Malara it’s a raging river: “in RAI anyone who does not submit to political correctness, while still respecting all the principles and canons of professional ethics, is banned and censored. And we are trying to change this paradigm by restoring freedom“.
This is why all the nonsense about freedom of the press in danger, about the “Orban drift” or “fascism” is nonsense: “The reasons for yesterday’s strike are completely laughable, in the midst of the electoral campaign for the European elections, shouting from the rooftops this pseudo danger for freedom that does not exist, and above all acting as support for the various Scurati, Bortone and ringing company who have created a case where there is no case. The real point – underlines the journalist of the Giornale Radio Rai – is that freedom of the press exists as long as you say things that are good for them. If you support their theses, otherwise you are accused of fascism and Nazism. A true preventative censorship. The only sustainable truth in Rai was the one decided by USIGRAI, which in recent years has supported campaigns outside the union mandate, instead neglecting the interests of many colleagues who decided to remove themselves from the union for not having received the necessary support”.
The topic of budgets is also particularly hot. Malara remember how “there was a shortfall from USIGRAI’s accounts, the extent of which is unknown: some say 70 thousand euros, some say 100 thousand, some even 180 thousand euros”.
In essence there is more than one theme of unease towards USIGRAI.
“I really think so – he concludes Malara – Yesterday we succeeded There were also many journalists working and in the editorial offices who were not members of UNIRAI, as not all colleagues are members of a union. And it was the greatest success. Those who cry out about democratic danger, or Orbanian drift, are precisely those who actually exercise these methods and who want to maintain their exclusive control over the editorial staff, which was lost with yesterday’s non-strike which opens a new page in the history of RAI. A page, finally, of pluralism and freedom“.
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