Presutti and Piervincenzi under a barrage of media criticism

Allegations of political ties and conflicts of interest, the circulation of photos deemed compromising, insinuations about questionable associations, and a media smear campaign. Following Sigfrido Ranucci, the ‘Report method’ is now also engulfing the programme’s two new presenters, Giulia Presutti and Daniele Piervincenzi. Just a few hours after Rai’s decision, the daily newspaper Domani published a photo dug up from Presutti’s social media showing her as a guest at the Roman restaurant owned by Walter Lavitola, who has been accused of masterminding the attack on Ranucci. It was Ranucci himself who further fuelled the controversy: “I never told her to go to him for work-related reasons. I only found out later that she’d also gone there on her own on other occasions for projects I was never made aware of.”

“This can also be verified through the chats seized from Lavitola’s phone,” he added. How Ranucci is aware of the contents of the chats seized from Lavitola remains a mystery, but the smear campaign against Presutti has served its purpose. Then it was Piervincenzi’s turn, first accused of controversial friendships (with the founder of the ‘Welcome to Favelas’ page), then of being a partner in a company that received two direct contracts from the CNEL worth around 24,000 euros each. Hence the accusation that he is close to Renato Brunetta and not fully independent. Yesterday, Ranucci returned to lambasting his two successors. After repeating that he had been “the target of 2,800 smear articles”, Ranucci described the decision to entrust the leadership of “Report” to Piervincenzi and Presutti as “mediocre”; he accused both of having passed a Rai recruitment process “designed to fill staffing gaps in the editorial teams of regional news programmes”, he said they lacked the skills to present the programme (recalling that Piervincenzi had worked with ‘Report’, delivering “a late report that I had to fix a couple of times”), and finally he took another swipe at Presutti (“Courage and mental resilience are not his strongest qualities”). In short, Ranucci is asking to be protected, in practice, from the ‘Report method’, yet he then applies it to others. The mudslinging will overwhelm them.