President of public service
broadcaster Rai Marinella Soldi said Thursday she hoped there
would be further reflection within the organisation on the
decision not to offer a platform to anti-mafia writer and
campaigner Roberto Saviano for a planned new show on the Mob.
"With all due respect to the institutions, I would like to call
for further internal reflection" on the cancellation of
Saviano's programme Insider, scheduled for November, "in order
to find a management solution in a reasonable timeframe, in the
interest of viewers and the company, bearing in mind, among
other things, that this is a programme that has already been
recorded", said Soldi.
Insider is a television product "in the spirit of pubic service
broadcasting", she added.
On Wednesday Rai CEO Roberto Sergio announced in an interview to
Il Messaggero that Saviano's show would not be airing.
The 43-year-old Gomorrah author, who has been under police
protection from the Camorra for 17 years, said the decision was
"clearly political".
"They have come up with an ethical code that responds to the
desires of those like (Transport Minister and righwing League
leader Matteo) Salvini who in 2015 said 'I'd swap two
Mattarellas for one Putin'."
Saviano noted that the programme, on which he had been working
for over a year, highlighted the anti-mafia work of Father
Giuseppe Diana, slain by the Camorra in 1994, and other
"persecuted" reporters.
He said he would not take the programme to other channels and
said that on Rai there was "no longer room for doing anti-mafia
(shows)".
Saviano is currently on trial for calling Premier Giorgia Meloni
and Transport Minister Matteo Salvini "bastards" over a strict
immigration policy in which they called NGO run rescue ships
"sea taxis" and "cruise ships".
He also recently described Salvini as "the organised crime
minister".
Brothers of Italy (FdI), Meloni's rightwing party, said this
remark alone meant the writer, a hero to many, was "unworthy" of
appearing on public television.
The centre-left opposition Democratic Party (Pd) said Wednesday
Ytaly's parliamentary anti-mafia commission should debate Rai's
decision, alleging that it is part of an ongoing government
purge of left-wing voices from the airwaves.
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