Italian public broadcaster journalists have announced a strike. The “suffocating control” of the media sought by the Meloni government is mentioned as the reason. The journalists of the Italian public radio and television Rai are going on strike on May 6 and 7. The reason, as their largest union, Usigrai, complains, is “the suffocating control over the work of journalists, with an attempt to turn Rai into a government mouthpiece, the absence of an overall development plan for the company and the lack of journalists on all television and radio channels of Rai”. It is, as is well known, one of the largest public broadcasting organizations in Europe, with seventy years of history and almost 2,000 journalists.”

“Unwanted voices” on Italian public broadcasting

The main issue, according to Italian journalists of the 1,700-member Usigrai union, is political control by the Meloni government. Commentators remind us that a series of problems have arisen in the last period. From the departure of well-known presenters, who guaranteed record viewing figures, to the cancellation of the participation of the author Antonio Scurati in a Rai Tre show. The author was going to read his text, in which he talked about Georgia Meloni’s relationship with fascist and neo-fascist historical reality. But at the last minute Rai changed her mind and asked him not to show up at the studio.

There are, however, other cases that disturbed journalists. For example, that the Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama, called and spoke with the head of the Italian public television and protested about a report of an investigation concerning the agreement between Rome and Tirana on immigration. Also last week, Rai Uno broadcast a program on abortion, in which not a single woman was invited to speak. At the same time, Rai Uno’s deputy news director declared that “abortion is not a right, but murder”, leaving the participants in a televised debate stunned.

Prime Minister Georgia Meloni insists she does not want to impose any kind of censorship, “because she and her party have been victims of exclusion from the small screen in the past”. However, the impression of many commentators in Rome is that some of the new executives of Rai are trying to appear “more royal than the king”, as a result of which “voices” and positions that do not align with the new political reality are left on the sidelines. Today the conservative newspaper Il Giornale calls for Rai to be privatized because, as it says, “it has been enslaved by the political parties”. In any case, this is a case that will cause many confrontations and acute political conflicts…