Ranucci hurls what he considered to be mud at Giorgio Mottola

Just a few days ago, Sigfrido Ranucci had accused the Corriere della Sera of publishing falsehoods in an article reporting rumours that long-serving Report correspondents were ready to leave the programme should the Labour Court reinstate the former presenter: “Yet another false article by the Corriere della Sera,” he wrote. It now transpires that these disagreements do indeed exist. Filorosso, Antonino Monteleone’s programme on Rai3, broadcast footage from a conference in Modena, as part of the DIG journalism festival, at which three long-standing figures from Report criticised Ranucci. Two are former members of the programme: Gian Gaetano Bellavia and Alberto Nerazzini. The third, Giorgio Mottola, would become one should his former friend Sigfrido return to the helm. Bellavia, Report’s long-standing accountant and adviser, who had already distanced himself from Ranucci, suggested to Mottola that Report should investigate the Lavitola case. Nerazzini, a long-standing correspondent for Report, said that Ranucci has nothing left-wing about him – as evidenced by his close relationship with Lavitola – and that he had suffered “three instances of censorship at the hands of Sigfrido Ranucci, the symbol of independent journalism”Finally, Mottola, a current correspondent for Report, confirming what the Corriere had written, said that he, “in Sigfrido’s place”, would have “taken a step back” (which is what Ranucci asked of Daniele Piervincenzi) and that Sigfrido’s “entirely incomprehensible stance” had “torn the relationship apart in a way that cannot be mended”.

Ranucci replied to all three, rejecting the accusations. But his response to Mottola is particularly telling: “It was broadcast freely on several occasions,” wrote the former presenter of *Report*. He didn’t do badly financially either, given that he ended up earning around 330,000 euros a year by selling his investigative reports (editing and travel costs included in the price): the highest figure of all the correspondents”. In effect, Ranucci is holding his former friend’s substantial earnings against him – the very same figures that, just a month ago, had been published by Daniele Capezzone’s Il Tempo, prompting a barrage of accusations of falsehoods and threats of legal action from Report’s journalists: “You’ve published false figures on salaries,” Ranucci wrote on Facebook, having always referred to the Angelucci Group’s newspapers as a sort of smear campaign directed against him. Now Ranucci has hurled that very same material at his former colleague Mottola, thereby doing Il Tempo a huge favour. In any defamation trial brought by the Report journalists, the Angelucci Group’s defence team will be able to call Mr Ranucci to testify; should the judges so wish, he will once again become the presenter of Report.