Big Brother stays on schedule, news director quits

Michael Hedges February 11, 2009

The gripping story a comatose woman’s last days with family and physicians pitted against politicians and the Church also pitted a renowned television journalist against his network. The journalist wanted to tell the story. The network refused, preferring a Big Brother episode. The news anchor resigned.

TG5 news director and presenter Enrico Mentana resigned abruptly (Tuesday, February 10) when the station’s management refused to replace an episode of Big Brother with a special news program on the last days and death of Eluana Englaro, a woman who finally succumbed after 17 years in a coma.

“In the face of a tragedy that shakes the whole company,” said Mentana in a press statement, “Mediaset has decided not to change one point of its programming. This is not how we do information on a large national network. There is only the audience.”

Mediaset immediately accepted Mentana’s resignation, canceling his talk show Matrix with immediate effect.

“Mentana is a very experienced journalist who knows the rules of the TV commercial that allowed him…to work in complete freedom and editorial autonomy,” said Mediaset director Mauro Crippa in a statement. “We are, in fact, a system of three networks and I believe that we should not ever forget that the public has different needs, as demonstrated, moreover, by the programming of our competition.” Crippa offered that public channel Rete 4 broadcast a special program on the passing of Eluana Englaro.

“While RAI upset its schedule for a special on Channel 5 the only tears that were paid were those of Federica in the ‘Big Brother’ house,” smacked TG5 journalists in a note quoted in La Stampa (February 10). The network made “a choice that once again, faced with a tragedy that has shaken the country, is following logic blind to the audience and takes away the credibility of a network that thrives on publicity.”

“The respect that Channel 5 showed (in broadcasting) ‘Big Brother’ and the rationale for the audience last night was foolish and harsh even for commercial TV,” said the National Federation of Italian Journalists. “The business decision sounds even more incredible and humiliating given the resources available to journalists. Channel 5 has lost an important opportunity for competition in the field of quality, pluralism of information, civil sensitivity.”

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi issued an emergency decree to force physicians and health care workers to maintain nutrition to the 38 year woman who had been in a coma since 1992. The Italian President Giorgio Napolitano rejected the decree citing a court ruling allowing extreme life extending measures to be halted. After Eluana Englaro’s death (Monday February 9) Prime Minister Berlusconi said she had been “killed.” The obvious political intervention bears eerie similarity to the Terri Schiavo episode in the United States when then US President George W. Bush virtually brought the government to a halt in the interest of appeasing right-wing religious factions. The family of Silvio Berlusconi controls Mediaset, Italy’s largest privately owned broadcaster, which owns TG5. In 2007 Mediaset purchased controlling interest in “Big Brother” producer Endemol for €2.63 billion.

Enrico Mentana has been cross-wise of Mr. Berlusconi before. In 2004 he was sacked as a news anchor. Most observers suspect Mr. Berlusconi’s interest in having friendly journalists on television ahead of the 2006 elections. After widespread outrage at the sacking, Mentana was reinstated, named TG5 news director and anchored the news talk program Matrix.