Talk show hosts, from Giovanni Floris to Bianca Berlinguer, believe they are doing the same job as when they started. Yet it would be useful to look in the mirror, to see how over the years more and more space has been given to scoundrels and mythomaniacs, often without even the shadow of cross-examination
I am too secular and tolerant not to shudder at inquisitorial auto-da-fés, Stalinist self-criticisms or Maoist struggle sessions; On the other hand, I strongly advocate professional examinations of conscience, because often the job one does and the job one believes one does are not the same job at all, if not nominally. I therefore hope that someone will take the opportunity offered by the Adnkronos interview with professor Federigo Argentieri, who has resigned from Limes, on the “toxic media cloud” that envelops the war in Ukraine and on the television editorial staff waiting for prime time to flood the public with tall tales. My thoughts go above all to the talk show hosts. To Giovanni Floris, who we learned to appreciate twenty years ago for his clean and chubby face as a top of the class and his impeccable curriculum as a well-mannered scion of the liberal university and pro-European information; or to Corrado Formigli, the pupil of Michele Santoro who seemed to want to follow his master in everything except in smug rascality, and who was less burdened, for generational reasons, by the ancient chain of solidarity and ideological hostility that always make the author of Samarkand so predictable. I will observe a charitable silence on Bianca Berlinguer and others. We have been seeing them on screens every week for years, in some cases decades, and they are probably convinced in good conscience that they are always doing the same job. But habit clouds you, and every now and then it’s useful to look in the mirror; perhaps in the mirror of a broadcast from their beginnings. How is it possible, they might ask, that from concession to concession, from accommodation to accommodation, my function has become that of handing a microphone to perfect scoundrels, scoundrels, troublemakers and mythomaniacs in a blaze of applause, often without a shadow of cross-examination? Is creating a “toxic cloud” good for the health of democratic information? Is this my job? And above all: is this what I wanted?
