MILAN (Reuters) – Journalists at Rai, Italy’s public broadcaster, are being called to strike for 24 hours on May 6 to denounce the “stifling” control exercised by Giorgia Meloni’s government over their work.
This call for a strike launched Thursday by Usigrai, the main union of in-house journalists, comes a few days after the cancellation of a program in which the writer Antonio Scurati intended to criticize the incapacity of Giorgia’s far-right party Meloni to break with his “post-fascist past”.
The Rai management and the government denied having wanted to censor the reading of Antonio Scurati, organized on the occasion of the Liberation Day celebrating every April 25 the end of the German occupation in 1945 after the fall of Mussolini. The public channel cited, without specifying, “editorial reasons” behind this deprogramming.
Giorgia Meloni, whose Fratelli d’Italia party has its roots in the post-fascist movement, has publicly denounced all forms of totalitarianism but refuses to rally behind the founding anti-fascism of the post-war Italian Republic, despite numerous calls to this effect.
Since coming to power in 2022, several Rai executives and presenters have resigned, denouncing government interference.
In its call for a strike, Usigrai sets out, among other grievances, the desire to “transform Rai into a spokesperson” for the executive.
Unirai, a minority union, declared that it would not join this “political” movement.
(Elvira Pollina, Jean-Stéphane Brosse for the French version)
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