A skewed vision of the world

RAI, the Italian state-owned radio and television, best known abroad for its talk-shows featuring elderly men and scantily-clad younger women, is planning to close its offices in Africa, South America, India, the Arab world and on halving its overall presence in the Mediterranean, marking an all time low in the significance given to first-hand quality reporting in the country.

The General Direction has declared to the administration board its intention to cut news offices in Beirut, Buenos Aires, Cairo, Nairobi and New Delhi.

These represent five out of fifteen foreign desks, among which the one in Kenya, which recently opened thanks to specific lobbying activities undertaken by Italian civil society, third sector associations and the missionary world.

These RAI foreign offices will not be the only ones to close however. RAI Med, the channel which broadcasts in Italian and Arabic, will be cancelled too, making the amount of cuts increase to 8 million euros.

Ennio Remondino, the foreign desk journalists’ representative from the RAI journalists’ union Usigrai, said that “this is a senseless choice both from a journalistic and a political point of view, done almost in silence with the aim of providing derisory savings compared to the incapability of moralising and rationalising the use of resources”.

According to the trade union it is not about costs but about priorities. “Those five foreign correspondence offices’ costs amount to 700/800,000 euros per year, while every day RAI spends million of euros in contracts”.

In an official statement, Roberto Natale, the National Federation of Italian Press (FIEG) President, criticized this decision, saying: “The thought of closing five foreign offices and switching RAI Med off – which means that foreign news will be limited to the US and Europe – clearly demonstrates that RAI management has no idea what a public service should do”.

The current climate has seen numerous associations and members of Parliament pushing the Italian public television not to close its foreign desks.

Italian associations, gathered under the so called “Tavola della Pace”, the Italian movement for peace, have launched an appeal through the weekly Vita non profit magazine, registering over 2000 signatures from private persons, associations and editorial offices in just two days.

“We hope that RAI will leave this bad idea to rest,” said Flavio Lotti, the spokesperson of the “Tavola della pace”.

“We are asking for the service to be instead improved by creating a new programme schedule with an increase in daily spaces dedicated to news. It is not about defending this or that job place, but about a normal element of democracy: we need to know what is happening all over the world and to have information made by professional journalist working seriously and with the required skills”.

Numerous news agencies and missionary reviews have launched appeals through their websites too, like MISNA, the online agency created by missionaries around the world or Nigrizia the Italian monthly magazine about Africa and all magazines members of FESMI, the Italian Federation of Missionary Press, which gathers almost 40 newspapers, magazines and news agencies with a total amount of 500,000 copies sold in the whole of Italy.

By Emanuela Citterio – www.afronline.org

Translation by Chiara Caprio with further reporting by Rose Hackman