Italian left-wing opposition party PD will hold a ‘pro-press freedom’ sit-in outside the headquarters of national public broadcaster RAI, announced party leader Elly Schlein, over Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s alleged monopolisation of state TV for campaigning ahead of June’s EU elections.
Schlein’s call for a sit-in was triggered by a report with the headline “One thousand euro more for the elderly, vote on 8 and 9 June” and a rundown of the various government decrees to protect the elderly that aired on RAI’s flagship network TG1.
RAI is a joint-stock company 99.56% owned by the Finance Ministry.
“It is propaganda made in the most boorish form, on the skin of the elderly”, Schlein said, labelling Meloni as the “queen of teleshopping” and noting that the funds said to be for 14 million elderly people in the report would only reach 25,000 due to stringent requirements.
“A shameful lie, told to millions of Italians as if it were the truth”, wrote Marco Furfaro, head of Countering Inequalities and Welfare in the PD national secretariat, who spoke of “regime propaganda” and stressed the inappropriateness of associating the funds with the European elections in June.
In her call, Schlein also urged the opposition and ‘social’ political forces to join in defending “press freedom and the value of a public service that cannot be TeleMeloni” but shall be free and plural.
In response to the criticism, the broadcaster’s right-wing union ironically invited PD representatives to the next TG1 summary meeting “so they can dictate topics and news headlines”.
Meloni’s Fratelli d’Italia (ECR), for its part, redirected the accusations against PD, saying it was leading an offensive against press freedom. “The new attack on TG1 is unhinged and wrong”, said Fratelli d’Italia, Deputy and Vice-President of RAI’s supervisory commission, Augusta Montaruli.
On the side of Lega, Fratelli D’Italia’s partner in government, MPs said: “On the left, they are used to being in charge, in state TV and most newspapers, but the music has changed. If Schlein does not like it, she can always change the channel”.
Disputes over how the heavily subsidised public broadcaster is funded and controlled are not new.
In 2021, on the other side was Meloni – then head of the only opposition party to the Draghi government – who was kept from the RAI board of directors.
“Fratelli d’Italia – the only opposition party and, according to many polls, the first Italian party – is purged of any representation so that the public service, paid for with the money of all Italians, is more like the Chinese model than that of any democratic nation”, Meloni said on Draghi’s appointments to the RAI board at the time.
Meanwhile, Meloni’s government is grappling with the so-called ‘Mattei Plan for Africa’, for which the prime minister is currently hosting 25 African leaders in Rome.
Meloni wants to solve the age-old problem of migratory flows into Italy by relying on the cooperation of transit and source countries and forging agreements on energy and trade with a “non-predatory” but “equal partnership” model.
The summit, which began late on Sunday evening, is also being attended by European Council President Charles Michel, European Parliament President Roberta Metsola and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.
(Federica Pascale | Euractiv.it)
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