Election gifts

After years of mounting unease among journalists working for the Rai state TVs and Radios, the trade Union representing their interests -USIGRAI- is taking the necessary burocratic steps to call for a general national strike. It would be the first time that Rai journalists strike for reasons other than a rise in wages, and this time they have the full support of the National Union of Journalists (FNSI) that is fighting the government’s heavy cuts on cultural funding, which are set to force a great number of newspapers to shut altogether.

The move comes after the parliamentary commission (CdV) set to control Rai's respect of broadcasting laws gave a weird interpretation of the italian law -Par Condicio- that regulates the presence of political figures on TVs. It does so by stating that political representatives of each party should appear on TV proportionally to the share of votes the party gathered at the previous election. The Par Condicio law was passed by the 1996-2000 leftwing government which, unable to agree on a law on Berlusconi's conflict of interests, established general criteria to be imposed on every Italian TV and radio stations.

Last week the CdV, which is not supposed to interpret laws but only to make sure they are applied, decided that Rai should comply with Par Condicio in a very special way: in view of April’s regional elections they should suspend whatever investigative program which touches topics related to politics, as such topics could potentially be favouring some political parties over the others. This would imply the full closure of around 11 programmes on the RaiTV channels. Beside the obvious damage to people’s right of information, it is very important to note that this provision only applies to the Rai channels, i.e. not to Berlusconi’s ones. This means that Rai (44 % of audience share) will lose advertising money together with credibility, while its main competitor (Berlusconi’s Mediaset, 41% of audience share) will once again profit from Rai’s economic Hara-kiri.

These are the economic consequences, but what about the political ones? Well, it is easy to guess that if people don’t find information on Rai, they will turn to Mediaset (unless they have satellite TV, but that’s a different story). And who would require a company not to fully support its owner, especially when he needs all the help he can find to win elections in a time in which his popularity is slowly –but steadly- declining?

The opposition had voted the Par Condicio law thinking that it would restrain Berlusconi's Tvs from becoming a straightforward tool of propaganda. Instead this is what was achieved: serious limits to freedom of information were set, Berlusconi anyway won the following elections, and now the law is turning against the very politicians that had voted for it.

Last week in Geneva, at the UN 7h periodical universal review, a report on Italy’s compliance with human rights standards was submitted. In this report, obviously focused on immigration policies, some remarks were made about the Italian Media Anomaly. These remarks were also stressed by many of the delegations present at the meeting. The three major propositions were: to regulate the conflict of interests, to liberalize the TV licences, and to set a limit to the Government’s control of the Rai state TV. The Italian delegation, headed by vice minister V. Scotti, unsurprisingly omitted to address these concerns. But what was really amazing was that he took the time to explain that Rai is not influenced by the govt, and that in fact there is a special parliamentary commission (the CdV) set to make sure that things stay this way. There wouldn’t be much to add to such a self contradicting argument, except that it was pronounced just 1 day after the same CdV had set the measures explained above.