Dear director, there is no longer just one of «mamma Rai». In recent days, a wall has collapsed, although less iconic than the one in Berlin, considered equally unbreakable: the “left” one on viale Mazzini. The mainstream press, which for years lived on collaborations and appearances on television, now writes in a compact way about an attack by the current executive in the chairs of Rai. But if intellectual honesty, or better yet, conscience, are no longer in fashion, at least they could have done some historical analysis. In a letter to Ugo La Malfa in 1968, Alberto Ronchey was the first to use the word “order” in Rai; formerly, however, it was the “use and custom” of the pro tempore government to poke its nose into state television. With the 1975 Reform, the parties gave the green light to formalize the division of Rai into a “pluralism” that in the following years followed the “divide and conquer” format: Raiuno in the center, Raidue for the socialists and Raitre for the PCI. So, after the justicialist fury of Tangentopoli, what was the initial division leaned more and more to the left. Then we come to Matteo Renzi’s Reform of 2015, through which Palazzo Chigi and Mef are given a decisive influence on state TV thanks to the appointment of the general director. And so we come to today, when profanity and gags are shouted without remembering that some of the leaders appointed in the last few hours – Corsini, Ciannamea, Mellone – have been “confined” and discriminated against for years despite their unquestionable qualities. And the much talked about departure of Fábio Fazio, as you want to read, is nothing more than a totally legitimate unilateral resignation in a free market.
What is not likely, if it exists at all, is that among the guests who have followed each other in the room of «Che tempo che fa» in twenty years, there are not many who have created a contradiction with the presenter, since, deep down, only the culturally similar and prone to “companionship” were welcome, with the exception of the unmissable Gigi Marzullo. And as far as non-leftist books and writers go, the best seat on that show has always just been the famous tabletop aquarium. Madron and I, who released our new book “The Powerful in the Time of Giorgia” on May 30th, I don’t think we would have ever been invited to Fazio’s court. That said, Lucia Annunziata’s irrevocable and controversial farewell to Rai is regrettable. The journalist, after having passed “anointed by the Lord” from the direction of Tg3 to the presidency of Rai with the blessing of a strong power of the time like Cesare Romiti, knows the dynamics of Rai well. For this very reason, her departure from the scene seems like the first commercial of the more than likely campaign for the European elections, following in the footsteps of “Lilli la rossa” who, in search of “posthumous virginity”, enlisted among her guests, in La7, the witty Italo Bocchino and Alessandro Giuli, as we recount in the book along with all the twists and turns of its editor Urbano Cairo. Many have asked us why this new effort of ours now. The answer we gave when presenting the book at the Trento Economics Festival is that in such an alternate political scenario, faced with the enormous challenge for the center-right and, above all, finally with a true “primadonna” on the command deck, we couldn’t escape. As was done with “The man who whispers to the powerful” in 2013 and 2015, when we tried Renzi’s power. Our prediction at the time was that, if he wanted to last, Renzi had to stop being “Renzi”. Almost ten years have passed and we have seen how things went.
Let’s see if Giorgia, very fascinated by the secret services – to which an entire chapter is dedicated – will manage, as the country asks, to provide stability, avoiding the mistakes of Rottamatore, the vanities of Monti, the bizarre and harmful somersaults of the lost opportunity of the smokehouse Conte and Draghi, who thought more of the Quirinale than of governing Italy. In a world made of tweets and reels, where everything “shakes” quickly, we also focused on the cannibalization of the left by the center-right led by Meloni and a world emerged, the one that revolves around Giorgia. Lots of anecdotes and events like in a novel. It is out of curiosity that our three books on power were born. Together with Paolo, sharing our wealth of experiences, we want to deliver an unconventional reading, uninterested in a “like” or a “downvote”, a reflection that tries to go beyond the nose and mainstream thinking. While exhausting to prepare – we often comb through hundreds of sources – our conversations represent an often amusing comparison. They are like a photograph that unites two worlds of our beautiful country, politics and economy, Rome and Milan, industrialists and state managers, seasoned with protagonists and extras from all that middle ground – in jargon it is called deep state even though this government only wants Italian words – that revolves around you. Behind the ironic tones and “Romanaccio” jokes of our Premier, there is a freshness full of novelties and antecedents, such as his obsession with honesty, well synthesized in the recurring phrase “se ve piglio con n’euro ve corco”, seasoned with the amusing actions of some of his former comrades, all of this always with that biting lightness and irony, as Andreotti taught me, which made each book a bestseller.
Source: IL Tempo

Emma Fitzgerald is an accomplished political journalist and author at The Nation View. With a background in political science and international relations, she has a deep understanding of the political landscape and the forces that shape it.