One Election After Another, Broadcasting Shifts

Michael Hedges September 9, 2019 Follow on Twitter

The political world is evermore obsessed by media messaging. All factions in the great circus of ideas want a megaphone. That intersects painfully with public media, founded decades ago along the idea of dutifully providing service to the public, now encompassing digital platforms. Winning an election, where applicable, gives that giant megaphone to somebody new.

When the Italian populist Five Star Movement (M5S) and far-right nationalist Lega, formerly Lega Nord, parties secured a governing coalition 15 months ago the expected wild ride was unending. Except it did when another election and coalition negotiation pitched out Lega and its colorful leader Matteo Salvini for the center-left Democratic Party (PD) last week, reported the BBC (September 5). It is fairly clear that RAI (Radiotelevisione Italiana), the nominal public broadcaster, will see a new crop of political appointees taking significant roles. The last bunch, many aligned with Lega, will be shown the door. Some are gone already.

In the Italian government organigram, RAI is controlled by the Ministry of Economy and Finance, which appoints directors and such. The new minister is Roberto Gualtieri, PD member of the European Parliament (MEP) until appointment. A new undersecretary for communications, in direct line of RAI supervision, has yet to be named.

In the coming week, the new RAI supervisory board will first meet, giving weight to the new political coalition and reducing that of far-right parties. The position of chief executive and director general Fabrizio Salini is strengthened and president Marcello Foa weakened. Mr. Salini, with actual television broadcasting experience, was appointed in July 2018 as part of the first wave of executives appointed by the M5S-Lega government. Mr. Foa, with no broadcasting experience but an interesting career as a far-right newspaper columnist for a Swiss-Italian newspaper and a big fan of conspiracy theories.

Other appointees of the former M5S-Lega government, from channel directors to program producers, are on the bubble. “If they were all ‘leaguers’ before, they are now in the ‘Salvini who?’ phase,” wrote populist Rome daily Il Fatto Quotidiano (September 6). RAI’s TV channels have been bleeding viewers and advertising revenues are sagging with the overall Italian economic malaise. "The network has often had to change the schedules to tell the chronicles of the government crisis and this has damaged us,” said RAI 1 director Teresa De Santis.

Italian media watchers, among others, are carefully considering the future of Mr. Foa, who holds both the RAI presidency and a seat on the supervisory board. He can be fired from the presidency directly by Minister Gualtieri, large pay-out forthcoming, but the appointment to the supervisory board has tenure. “You can already smell the blood,” headlined media news portal primaonline.it (September 7). Another commentator referred to the “bloody revenge” chronicled by first century Roman Stoic politician and dramatist Seneca.

Other European public broadcasters have undergone drastic changes under right-wing populist governments, notably Poland’s TVP and Hungary’s MTV. Denmark’s right-wing government promised to cut severely the operating budget of public broadcaster DR but that was reversed with the election of a new center-left government. The venerable BBC has been under constant pressure for decades from conservative UK politicians as well as newspaper publishers.

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