Carlo Verna leaves Rai “a lost soul” and sues: “A company not a company”

Special For Without Gagging
Andrea Di Quarto
Milan, 22 April 2024

When a professional who successfully linked a large part of his professional life to “Mamma Rai” leaves the Company, always arousing great regret.

We are not talking about Fabio Fazio or even Amadeus who, as entertainers, rightly enliven the market of television engagements, but of Carlo Verna. Editor and correspondent of Rai for 42 years, from 2006 to 2012 secretary of the journalists’ union (Rai Usigrai) and from November 2017 to November 2021 president of the national council of the Order of Journalists, Verna worked at the regional headquarters of Campania dealing with sport , but also of the hosting of the news. He was one of the voices of “Tutto il calcio minuti per minuti” and covered world, European and Olympic championships in swimming, water polo, diving and synchronized swimming for the Rai Radio Newspaper. On television he hosted the “Criamo” column, a Monday afternoon rotogravure on Rai 3 dedicated to Serie C football.

Verna took leave, a year early, sending a bitter open letter to the board members. In it he announces a legal dispute and draws a worrying portrait of a Rai that he defines as “not a company” and a “lost soul”, because “the rules that govern its governance they disintegrate that spirit that should animate every working community.” In what is essentially a letter of surrender, Verna admits having tried in every way, in her roles representing the category, “to drag public opinion and the political agenda towards indispensable requests for autonomy, with some small and unfortunately transitory result”.

“Know that beyond the four end-of-year conferences with different Premiers and/or representing different political majorities, managed as President of all Italian journalists, I have had constant relationships with politicians of all sides but always with the pride of representing a controlling power”, writes Verna.

“Never a step lower, also and always to give voice to half of the citizens who consider themselves excluded from authentic participation in democracy and abstain when they go to the polls. Perhaps they feel disrespected in the same way as those in Rai who do not want to accept the current rules of engagement, which are destined to have a negative impact on human relationships”.

Verna digs her finger into a wound, that of the dependence of governance Rai from politics, highlighted by the news of the last few days: the strike of Radio Rai journalists against the cancellation of the Sports Editorial Team and of GR Parliament, the modification of the level playing field (with government representatives who will be able to speak in talks on political topics without constraints of time and without cross-examination, while Rainews24 will broadcast the political rallies in full version without journalistic mediation), the Scurati case, the mass escape (or expulsion) of people who are not in line (or unwelcome) to the new editorial line renamed “Telemeloni” , or “occupation with camel troops of the public service” – in the words of the opposition – or “liberation from the cultural hegemony of the left on state TV” – according to the exponents of the current majority.

The problem is not new at all. The wind changes, but the subdivisions at Rai do not. It is not the first time – but rather the practice – that with the change in the balance of the Palace, the attack on the Rai diligence has been triggered. Politics and public service go hand in hand and if the government line changes, this is inevitably reflected in a reform (almost always wicked) of state TV.

A “practice” that appeared in Italy with the switching on of the first television: since 1953 the management of TV had been divided between the more “corporate” part of Rai, without political connotations, and that expression of Christian Democratic power. Until the infamous “subdivision”, born in 1975, with the reform of the public radio and television service and the transition of Rai from government to parliamentary control.

The division of radio and television channels on an electoral basis to the various political forces, the networks were divided between DC, PSI and PCI: TeleNusco, TeleCraxi and TeleKabul were born, i.e. Rai 1 under the wing of the Christian Democrats, Rai 2 under the influence of the Italian Socialist Party and Rai 3 under that of the Communist Party . From a single journalistic program we moved on to the creation of Tg1 and Tg2. Then, a third channel was added, four years later, designed to provide local information, region by region.

What has changed over the years? Very little, indeed, the division criterion has broadened to include editorial offices and management apparatus. Because we always talk about journalistic management positions and very little about that enormous management of public money which through the license fee ends up in the contracts of the three networks. Even the topics of fiction respond to the winds of government. The subdivision did not stop even with the Tangentopoli cyclone, which swept away the old subdivision parties, immediately replaced by the new ones, eager to fill the vacated seats, continuing to witness the practice of government influence on the first network and the division of the others: pro-government Rai 1, Rai 2 on the centre-right side and Rai 3 on the centre-left side. Regardless of whether Berlusconi, Prodi, Amato, D’Alema, Renzi or Conte were in government.

A continuous assault. In 2004, the Cavaliere government approved the Gasparri law on the reorganization of the public radio and television service, entrusting Parliament with the election of all nine Rai councilors and in 2015 Matteo Renzi approved a further reform which sanctioned the return of Parliament to Rai (and the parties) to the government’s Rai. A reform that gives Palazzo Chigi and the Ministry of Economy more influence on state television than in the past. The Ministry of Economy chooses the company head (a managing director, not a simple general manager) who has free hands on appointments (with the exception of journalistic directors) and on contracts of up to 10 million.

And so, for twenty years now There has been an ever-increasing – manifest, but never concrete – intolerance towards the subdivision mechanism. For every change of government, the age-old question was raised by the opposition with the slogan “outside the parties from Rai”, while they continued to divide up the public service appointments. A subdivision which is standard practice when it is done personally, but which becomes intolerable and anti-democratic when it is implemented by others.

In the endless discussion about partition of seats and positions of power in Rai among the political forces, there are always two parties involved, which are reversed based on the electoral results: whoever prevails at the polls occupies public television in all its ramifications; those who are rejected by the voters, not being able to occupy RAI, propose to reform it “Bbc Model”: “Enough politics in public television!”, “Let’s change everything!”.

In two years the 1975 reform will be fifty years old, the one that gave life to TeleNusco, TeleCraxi and TeleKabul, and perhaps, if you think about it, something has really changed in all these years. That subdivision was managed by the parties also in the name of the quality offered by their protégés hired by Rai. Thanks to the choice based on quality, Rai managed to survive the various attempts at downsizing implemented with the arrival of commercial television stations not subject to parliamentary supervision. The politicians of the time understood that quality represented the only guarantee for the company’s future. Today, when with the constant assault on diligence we have stopped looking at the skills of those on the payroll, all that remains is the Wild West of a television that is increasingly less public and less service-based. Which will remain so until an authentic reform is achieved, aimed above all at returning to Italians the management of one of the largest communications companies in Europe, the fifth largest television group on the continent, and above all of the largest Italian cultural company .

Andrea Di Quarto
[email protected]

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