Italian public TV company Rai and Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni are facing accusations of censorship. The Rai is criticized for not inviting the writer and Mussolini expert Antonio Scurati to participate in a political talk show on public television at short notice.
The 54-year-old Scurati is said to have read a monologue in the Rai 3 program “Chesarà” (roughly: What is going to happen) on Saturday evening on the occasion of “Liberation Day” on April 25. On the holiday, the country commemorates the liberation of Italy after the partisan uprisings of April 1945 against the German occupiers and their fascist allies.
Controversy over invitation and monologue
The writer’s invitation caused a heated controversy. The Rai decided to terminate Scurati’s contract because it did not want to pay 1,800 euros for reading a monologue of 3,500 characters. Scurati then made his short essay available for free to the presenter, who then read the text aloud on her show.
In his text, which was also published in numerous newspapers on Sunday, Scurati recalls the murder of the socialist politician Giacomo Matteotti by Mussolini’s fascists on June 10, 1924, as well as the mass murder of Italian civilians by the Wehrmacht in the spring of 1944. He complained that Meloni would never have “divorced themselves from their neo-fascist past.” She and her “post-fascist party” would instead try to “rewrite history.”
Meloni also shared text
The text of the monologue was later published online and shared by Prime Minister Meloni on her Facebook profile. “In an Italy with so many problems, the left is once again causing unnecessary conflicts. The left complains about censorship, to which Rai responds that she simply refused to pay 1,800 euros (the monthly salary of many employees) for a one-minute monologue. “I don’t know where the truth lies, but I am now publishing the text of the monologue myself (which I hope I don’t have to pay for),” Meloni wrote on social networks.
Cost just an excuse?
Scurati responded that the issue of his fee was merely a pretext to silence him. This is violence, the author complained. The journalists’ union Usigrai criticized that “the Rai leadership’s control over information is becoming more oppressive every day” and announced a five-day strike. Meloni has been accused for months of filling several top positions in Rai with trusted people.
Scurati’s non-invitation also caused a storm of outrage among the opposition. Elly Schlein, head of the social-democratic Partito Democratico, accused the right-wing government of “censorship and violence”.
Source: Krone
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