“Rai is wrong about Ranucci. He should stay where he is on Report.” Says Giovanni Minoli

“Sigfrido Ranucci must remain at ‘Report’. Rai is creating a new martyr.” Giovanni Minoli, one of the best-known television journalists and a former executive at Viale Mazzini, explains to Il Foglio all the dangers that could materialise as a result of the decision to remove the journalist from the helm of the Rai 3 programme. Yesterday, the public broadcaster’s top management met specifically to discuss this matter. On the table for Ranucci, it seems, is a range of other guaranteed posts with the same salary.

For Minoli, however, removing the journalist from the programme is not a wise, ‘long-term’ decision. ‘After all, Ranucci is the victim of an attack, until proven otherwise. He should be left where he is and we should see what the audience thinks of his new “Report 2.0” – the post-storm version – in the future. Otherwise, Rai looks like a company beholden to politics.’ Mamma Rai’s editing scissors have cut the ending of "The Da Vinci Code" and are now turning their attention to the presenter. Yet leaving things as they are “would be more logical, more in line with common sense”, says Minoli. “It would demonstrate a greater ability on the part of Rai’s top management to exercise power autonomously. And I emphasise ‘autonomously’.”

“Only by leaving everything as it is can we arrive at a clear truth, without creating unnecessary victims.” For the creator of ‘Mixer’, however, the decision by Rai’s top management does nothing but “turn Ranucci into a martyr. I wonder whether this is the right choice, an intelligent one, and one based on common sense”. Meanwhile, the rush to canonise the journalist began whilst the meeting of the public broadcaster’s top management was still underway, with Barbara Floridia, former chair of the Rai Supervisory Commission, speaking of a “veritable barrage of attacks by Fratelli d’Italia against Ranucci”, who ends up as a “victim three times over”: the attack organised by his friend and former businessman Valter Lavitola (due to appear before the Review Court on 7 September), then his involvement “against his will” in dealings with the wheeler-dealer, and finally – again according to Floridia – “today, a Rai which, under the Meloni government, seems to have turned ‘Report’ and its presenter into a political problem to be resolved”.

Avs has already booked the journalist for his party on 9 September in Testaccio, where a thunderous round of applause for the ‘triple’ victim is a foregone conclusion. Just as one can already foresee a rush on bookshops when his new literary work is published next year. “In Italy, playing the victim sells incredibly well. There are people who’ve built careers, made their fortune and earned money from it,” adds Minoli. “That’s why it would be better to keep him at ‘Report’ and leave assessments of his work solely to the public and the programme’s editorial team. Sometimes the simplest and least convolvol solutions are the ones that make the most sense and provide the answers, in my view.” At Viale Mazzini, however, Minoli continues, “they preferred to take a bureaucratic approach”. The same bureaucratic jargon used in July by Rai’s chief executive, Giampaolo Rossi, to justify the suspension of the summer repeats of "Report": “It was a measure taken to protect the company’s brand”. “But what brand? Those are just empty words,” replies Minoli. “Speaking of major brands, when Tortora was unjustly imprisoned, ‘Portobello’ was certainly not ‘protected’ by having someone else present it. It remained on hold until Tortora’s return, when he famously said: ‘Where were we?’” According to his lawyer, Roberto De Vita, Ranucci is being persecuted and Rai should protect him. And whilst the various aspects of the case are being assessed to avoid any potential labour disputes, a range of alternatives is opening up for him. The idea of him standing as a candidate with AVS, however, has been dismissed by Angelo Bonelli as “baseless”. For now.