The Rai journalists’ union openly protests against the top management: “When we talked about the suffocating control of politics we were referring to this. Rai, for this top management, must be the government’s megaphone. This was the change of narrative that they theorized”
Rai tries to curb the controversy. The Bortone case has now exploded and yesterday afternoon Viale Mazzini issued a note: “The schedules for next season are being defined. The Editorial Departments are working on the drafting and the presentation to the Board of Directors is scheduled for next week. Therefore all the rumors and news that are circulating in these hours are not confirmed”. A way to extinguish the controversyto take time, to study a solution.
The Rai schedules will be illustrated to the board of directors in the sessions of 26 and 28 June, presented to the press at the Naples headquarters on July 19th. As revealed by various sources, the company’s top management has decided to cancel “What will be“, the program hosted by Serena Bortone, broadcast on Saturday and Sunday evenings on Rai3. The news had been in the air for days, the newspaper Republic had hypothesized a sort of “half-purge”, with the cancellation of only one evening, Sunday, but the hard line prevailed in Viale Mazzini. At least according to the rumours, waiting for the official announcement or perhaps an about-face.
Bortone is an employee, in this case she will have to be relocated. However, the rumors are enough to unleash chaos, the decision for many a “punishment” for an unwelcome program to the center-right and in particular to Brothers of Italy, after the now well-known Scurati case. With a post on social media, the journalist had denounced the cancellation “without plausible explanations” of the writer’s contract that she was supposed to read a monologue on April 25th in her talk. “Hit one to educate a hundred. Rai’s method today is clear. If you are aligned with the Government you can go on stage Brothers of Italytalk about ‘our party’, as the Director of Insights, without any kind of dispute. Who, however, how Serena Bortone dares to rebel against the censorship of a guest ‘for editorial reasons’, he must be punished, indeed, fired, as declared by theTo Sergio, and perhaps canceled from the schedule. And while they are ready to send an employee to the bench, Rai is ready to call yet another external journalist, without valorizing those who are already in the company”, reads the Usigrai note.
The Rai journalists’ union openly protests against the leaders: “When we talked about the suffocating control of politics we were referring to this. Rai, for this top management, must be the government’s megaphone. This was the narrative change they theorized. Inconvenient items must be ‘fired’ or at least excluded from the schedule or downsized, as they try to do with Report; to Raitre’s investigative broadcast they try to reduce the episodes, trim the reruns or delay the start of the next season”.
The trade union organization representing the employees also targets the silence of the Rai television news and talk programs on the investigation into Fanpage: “Not only rumors, but also inconvenient news must be excluded, cLike Fanpage’s investigation into the Fdi youth movement; with the sole exception of Tg3 and some broadcasts, maximum account was given of the political reactions, without talking about the investigation. A masterpiece. The results are there for all to see: a flight of viewers towards other competitors and a more than worrying financial situation.” Usigrai promises battle and makes it known that “non will take a step back in defense of colleagues who express dissent with respect to censorship and violations of rights to protect journalistic work and the public”.
Bortone, subjected to disciplinary proceedings, had received public criticism in recent days from the CEO Roberto Sergio: “Serena Bortone should have been fired for what she did. The 11th of this month will represent his theses and we will evaluate, but certainly no employee of any company would be allowed to say things against the company in which he works. She did this and she was not punished”. Sergio, who will hand over the chair to the current general manager in the coming weeks Giampaolo Rossihad commented to Il Foglio on the rumors about a possible halving of the broadcast: “The schedules will be presented to top management on Friday next week. To date, none of us are aware of what genre directors will bring us. So it’s news that doesn’t exist at the moment.” In its place, according to the site DavideMaggio.it, the journalist Maria Latella could arrive.
