A Report on Faith and Nonsense

Whatever happens, this ‘Temptation Report’ is the story of the summer: a succession of bonfires, suitcases bound for Cameroon, anonymous letters, dangerous tablecloths and marvellous captions parading across the talk shows – ‘he was a source and a close friend’. A format that would fit perfectly into Rai’s new schedule, if only they dared: investigative journalism and reality TV finally brought together, as it should be. The Lavitola–Ranucci affair, akin to Totti and Ilary a few summers ago, or Raoul Bova’s leaked audio recordings – but with a veritable throng of characters and cameos, a ‘third man’ played by Giletti, a lead tracing back to Rita De Crescenzo, the influencer behind the ‘Roccaraso sack’ – forget scripts churned out by ChatGPT! Here too, there are catchphrases that instantly become memes: the ‘love bomb’ like ‘those piercing eyes’ or that immortal ‘I’ll be your Gianni Letta’, which sooner or later I’d love to hear in a ‘Latin-style’ version sung by Malgioglio. There’s the wheeler-dealer with a thousand lives who swears eternal friendship; there are three mobile phones, two USB sticks, seven manuscripts, and Signal with its self-destructing messages. It’s American Tabloid rewritten by Age & Scarpelli, with the dream of leadership in the Campo Largo instead of the American one. And then the chorus: De Magistris evoking ‘Masonic circles and occult powers’ with Ranucci ‘caught up in a game bigger than himself’, just like in the voice-over of American thrillers. Fratelli d’Italia celebrating with a barrage of screenshots… ‘Report doesn’t go on holiday’, ‘but actually it does’, take that. All in all, a highly instructive story that lays bare major national themes: friendship, loyalty, journalism and the political climb, victimhood, mythomania, TV investigations with stadium-style cheering and, of course, the restaurant trade (specialising in fish), without which, as we’ve always said, nothing gets done in Italy.

But before people start crying foul over yet another vile attack on Report by this ‘neoliberal rag funded by public money’, let’s set the record straight: now that people are digging up past associations and friendships, now that sources, documents and stolen photographs are being scrutinised; now that shocking sex scenes are being dug up from Ranucci’s book – with the symbol of the uncomfortable investigation borrowed from Philip Roth’s demon, who wallows in sordid descriptions of sexual encounters with interns and swollen members – well, now one might even feel a touch of sympathy. For those of us who are always against the "Report" method – even when it’s directed against "Report" itself – what interests us, if anything, is the figure of the "Report" reporter, the loyal one, the one who believes in the ‘investigation’, as long as that investigation serves to smear enemies. Never touched by doubt, the "Report" community immediately rallied round the presenter: this is a conspiracy. A trap. A pretext to bring down the last bastion of free journalism ‘that cuts no one any slack’. Hashtags, placards, slides, petitions on Instagram: #IostoconRanucci, #Iopure, #GiùlemanidaReport. When Rai suspended the summer repeats “to protect an editorial heritage of great value to the public service” (censorship!), Report viewers flocked to RaiPlay, where the old episodes remain available, propelling them into the trending topics: “51,000 views from 9.15 pm, the time when Report was due to be broadcast, to watch the investigative programme on RaiPlay”. I must admit, I envy this firm conviction that watching a repeat on RaiPlay is an act of civil resistance, standing tall, opposition to the Establishment, ‘no pasaran’. You’ve got to believe it, as they say in Rome. But actually, over the years I’ve met people who watched "Report" in the evening with the same zeal with which my grandmother used to go to mass in the morning. The same conviction of being part of a greater plan. People who always made a point of saying they ‘don’t watch television’, making an exception only for "Report". You recognise them straight away by their fridge: a memorial to past investigations. From Gabanelli to Ranucci, over the years they’ve banned Scottish salmon (full of lice), tuna, chicken, then all meat, eggs, omelettes, Esselunga’s sliced bread, spaghetti with clams (making an exception only for Lavitola’s), supermarket olive oil, all fizzy drinks, Israeli dates stolen from the Palestinians, chocolate because it has ‘an ethically problematic supply chain’ and now even croissants from the café, because ‘when we bite into a croissant, we think we’re eating a fresh product, but it’s actually an ultra-processed food’ (La colazione grassa, episode of 31 May, available on RaiPlay). How can anyone live like this?

It’s clear that you leave the house in the morning already irritated with the world, the multinational yeast companies and the barista who hides everything from you, an accomplice in the ‘croissant scandal’. The "Report" viewer, however, is an old-fashioned, indignant type, tailored to the television target audience – hence either elderly or young at heart. Classic lineage: "Paese Sera", extra-parliamentary left, activist movements, then the succession of ‘peoples’ – of faxes, the ‘purple’ movement, the internet – followed by "Girotondi", "Grillism", conspiracy theories, deal-making, ‘Antimafia 2000’, Francesca Albanese, Gelli and the ‘Plan for Rebirth’ – which is always implemented, at every constitutional referendum, whoever proposes it, whatever it contains. The ‘Report’ viewer isn’t ‘woke’. The end of patriarchy leaves them lukewarm. The gender gap doesn’t move them much; the schwa even less so. The controversies surrounding the Black actress playing Helen of Troy in Nolan’s “Odyssey” do not interest him in the slightest, nor do the tirades about colonialism – unless it is American, Mussolini-style or that of Israeli settlers. His enemies are the same as ever: the entire global right wing, the multinationals of yesteryear, with their turnover and smokestacks, the pharmaceutical companies, the ‘digital giants’. The investigative journalist has been a key figure on the Italian scene for the last thirty years: we all know at least one, and we know how difficult the job is. If, for example, I had to debate with a flat-Earther and a Report loyalist, I’d always choose the latter, if only because I find it entertaining. So, when Ranucci says, ‘I’m happy to represent the average Italian’, firing back at Tommaso Cerno who was mocking him on social media, he should be taken at his word. He’s right. The average Italian is also the one from Report. Sullen, angry, convinced he lives in the most unjust, corrupt and wicked part of the world. Trapped in a country that only the partnership of judges and investigative journalists can redeem, or at least purify bit by bit.

This is the narrative premise – the pact between Report and its viewers – underpinning every single episode. And whatever the topic – water, public contracts, Renzi, solar power, chocolate biscuits – the ending is always the same: the country in tatters, the evil right-wingers, the horrendous pursuit of profit, redemption postponed to who knows when, certainly not with this PD, my dear lady. The report may be flawless or a shambles, but the ending is already a foregone conclusion. People watch "Report" to recognise themselves in it. The problem is certainly not bias, as the "Fratelli d’Italia" party or various detractors claim. Italian journalism is born biased, grows biased, thrives on bias: party newspapers, mouthpieces for personal battles, partisan third pages, and now – after twenty years of social media – stadium-style cheering, football-stand banners in the headlines. The problem is the method. Because "Report" presents itself as a state television tribunal that steps in where politics fails. There’s the prosecutor in the studio, the intercom call that serves as a formal notice, the editing that constructs the verdict – the sombre background music, the suggestive glances, the pause before the fateful question, then the cross-examination: ‘We tried to contact him, but he didn’t reply’. Forum, Le Iene, Striscia la Notizia and Report are not the same thing, but we should not forget that they are all part of that thing called television – and television, even when it is serious, sombre or indignant, always follows the laws of television: simplifying, tweaking, inventing.

But now that he finds himself a regular viewer of RaiPlay, the reporter might do well to brush up on what investigative journalism used to be like on Italian television before it became a matter of faith and fan loyalty. One could start with the educational black-and-white era: TV7, then AZ, "Un fatto come e perché" – Enzo Biagi’s programme, a title that was in itself a promise of restraint: a fact, a ‘how’, a ‘why’, see you on Thursday. No sermons, no pillories, no propaganda. Or Joe Marrazzo’s “Camorra dossiers”, which, when revisited today, are truly striking for the surgical precision of their language and imagery: Marrazzo entering prisons with a haggard face and emerging with Raffaele Cutolo. From those interviews came Il camorrista (1984) – a non-fiction masterpiece, our very own In Cold Blood. Cutolo, aboard the ship taking him to Asinara, recounts his long criminal odyssey – later adapted into a film by Tornatore starring Ben Gazzara and serving as the inspiration for every "Gomorra" series. Saviano has admitted to drawing almost everything from that work (and what he didn’t take from there comes from Scorsese, Coppola and De Palma). In Marrazzo, three cars were set alight, then a police escort when the journalists weren’t given one. He had no fanbase. No one ever asked him to lead a ‘Campo Largo’, polls in hand. Different times, granted. It was with Santoro and Samarcanda that investigative journalism began its slow but unstoppable transformation into a ritual. It became a religious cult, an identity-defining stance, a liturgy with its own faithful. Because it’s worth remembering every now and then: the Italian ‘counter-power’ was born out of political patronage, with the ‘moral question’ woven into the organisational structure of Viale Mazzini, and that much-hated patronage system that gave rise to the network now lamented by all. And it is within that system that the transformation took place. The programme is no longer merely a narrative and analysis, but a communion, an outcry, a vigil for the country that is sinking. The turning point: the evening dedicated to Libero Grassi, in September 1991, broadcast back-to-back with "The Costanzo Show". From that moment on, the viewers are no longer simply an audience: they are the best part of the country, validated week after week, standing against the other half that either refuses to see or is complicit. The investigative programme ceases to demand merely attention and begins to demand loyalty. Santoro is the John the Baptist of all that is to come, right down to Ranucci’s ‘repeat brigade’.

In the mid-1990s, the first Video 8 cameras – those lightweight handycams that replaced the old, bulky tripod-mounted cameras – propelled investigative journalism into the new world of blogs and freelancers: chasing subjects along the pavement as a new measure of truth, the hidden camera, the stolen confession, the crooked frame. Milena Gabanelli was the perfect fit for this new era: a graduate of Bologna’s DAMS, with a thesis on the history of cinema and the Nouvelle Vague. When, in the first episodes of "Professione Reporter" – the incubator for "Report" conceived by Minoli – she says that Video 8 is like a pen, and that the television investigation will be written in the first person like an article, she is reciting from memory the "caméra-stylo" concept of Alexandre Astruc, ideologue of "Cahiers du Cinéma".

Having also been gripped by the RaiPlay bug, I rewatched a few episodes of "Professione Reporter". How heart-warming! Here, for example, is an investigation by Paolo Barnard into hashish in Christiania, 1994: Jimi Hendrix playing in the background, a parade of stoners in the Danish utopian enclave portrayed as an alternative to hellish Western productivity. A co-founder of "Report", in 2001 Barnard produced "Little Pharma & Big Pharma", followed by the case of a pharmaceutical whistleblower, the indemnity clause, the spectacular split with Rai and with Gabanelli – accused of having abandoned him – and off he went towards his second life – the seventy-year-old conspiracy of the elites, the 2012 MMT summit at the Rimini stadium, two thousand paying attendees listening to economists from Missouri. From investigative journalism to cosmology with no stops in between. Report has always been a launchpad for gurus’ careers, more or less political, even before Valter Giannilletta Lavitola’s opinion polls. How could we forget the M5S, which in 2013 voted en masse for Milena Gabanelli in the ‘Quirinarie’ primaries for the Presidency? She, however, was a faceless figure: a flat voice, Calvinist understatement, a ‘non-presentation’ à la Maria De Filippi. With Ranucci, the promotional rhetoric changes: teasers, previews, the ‘bombshell’ (alas), the presenter-brand who becomes the news himself.

But the career of an investigative journalist now follows a fixed protocol, tried and tested over thirty years. It may strike like a bolt of lightning, straight away, between one campaign and the next, or after obtaining a freelance journalist’s card: but then there are five stages, always the same ones. Stage one: the investiture. You need a person of unblemished integrity – a journalist or a magistrate – who ‘doesn’t pull any punches’, and naturally you need an enemy to consecrate them, one who will embody, from time to time, Power, the System, ‘corruption’ – or the government, but only if the Right is in power at Palazzo Chigi. Stage two: martyrdom. Lawsuits, edicts, police escorts – countless police escorts – and suspensions: every administrative act will be reinterpreted as a station on the Way of the Cross. The “Bulgarian edict” is Santoro’s Golgotha. Since then, every little news item from Viale Mazzini has inherited that aura. Martyrdom cannot be skipped or faked: Giletti tried it with the closure of “Non è l’Arena”, but without prior anointing, martyrdom is merely a contract that hasn’t been renewed. Phase three: temptation. The polls, the sirens, the lunches, the ‘I’ll-be-your-Gianni-Letta’ of the moment: sooner or later, the proposal always comes to turn the following into consensus, the indignation into an electoral constituency. It is the most delicate phase. Few resist. And so we end up in phase four: the fall – sudden and ruinous, or slow and painless – but one that almost always coincides with having succumbed to ‘phase three’. Santoro, elected to Strasbourg with a landslide of votes, thus the saint who reveals himself to be human – that is, a politician – just like everyone else. Phase five: the ousting, the casting call, ‘next in line’. A crowded graveyard. The second stringers champing at the bit to take centre stage. Here we are. Today, however, perhaps with a few more chances of rebirth: starting afresh, for example, as a podcaster and restaurateur specialising in fish, fried fare, headphones and investigative reporting.