The talk show is the least suitable genre to talk about Ustica

It is always very difficult to talk about programs involving relatives of victims, in which, despite 44 years having passed since the Ustica massacre, many wounds are still open. But my task is to reflect on a program called «Ustica: a breach in the wall» (live on Rai 3 from the Museum for the Memory of Ustica) and on its host, Massimo Giletti. The stated aim of the program was very ambitious: to breach the rubber wall that it kept the families of the victims and an entire country away from the truth of this national tragedy, as if the value of other good journalists (first and foremost Andrea Purgatori, never mentioned during the evening) were being questioned. Now, faced with such a delicate topic, where state secrets, hidden truths and respect for the victims are at stake, the least suitable genre for dealing with it is the talk show. The “Arena” model cannot be used for topics that only require serious investigation.

During a talk, most of the time you don’t understand anything, you lose the thread of the conversation, one voice is as good as another; the progress of the discussion proceeds by accumulation and references and, in the end, despite the scoops invoked, one has the feeling that nothing new has been added to what was not already known: a war was taking place over the skies of Ustica between Libyan MiGs and NATO, French and American planes. The Dc9 was used to screen an escape. All evening, Giletti exhibited the “back-straight” posture“the heretic who seeks the truth”, as he defined himself. Instead, he behaved like any talk show host who tries to emphasize interviews, comparisons between guests, alleged revelations. If he had done an investigation, if he had filmed a documentary, perhaps he would have been more attentive to the subject matter than to himself; above all, he would have tried to make sense of a long and dark adventure full of tears, blood and enigmas. Ustica should remind us that a television talk show never resolves our perplexities or suppresses our ills: it is nothing but a stopgap and a palliative.