Rai takes ‘Report’ off the air; Ranucci promises trouble. And we’re in for another two months of farce

“We’ll meet again.” Sigfrido Dantès, the Count of Monte Ranucci, receives an email at five o’clock in the afternoon relieving him of his role as presenter of *Report* and offering him the famous ‘fan’ – which (as we have already explained in these columns) is not a play by Goldoni but three alternative roles from which to choose. The options are: ad personam deputy editor at Tg3 with responsibility for special programmes and podcasts; ad personam deputy editor for in-depth features and investigations at Rainews; or correspondent in Cairo, Ranucci of Egypt (where, in a year’s time, by a twist of fate, the sun will be eclipsed for six minutes – the record of the century). Taking his place as presenters are Giulia Presutti and Daniele Piervincenzi. The email was sent by Paolo Corsini, director of in-depth reporting. And Ranucci replied as follows. “I’ve already received it from ANSA. We’ll meet again.” At Filippi’s, or in court, presumably. Because the range of options is a legal precaution on the part of RAI. The three offers serve to demonstrate that the company has not demoted him. It is a document drafted by lawyers, not by directors. Ranucci knows this, and he replied with words that have nothing to do with the law but are thoroughly threatening. His remark echoes an earlier warning: “If they take the programme away from me, then we’ll have some fun – I’ve got everyone’s chats on my phone”, as reported in Il Foglio by Carmelo Caruso in August, which had made it clear to Viale Mazzini where his real trump card lay. On his phone. Even the journalists at Report are now turning against Rai and the new presenters. The Count of Monte Cristo had a list, and he followed it methodically. Here, however, revenge has erupted all at once and in every direction.

Ignazio La Russa says: “I’m delighted they’ve suspended Ranucci.” The President of the Senate weighing in on a Rai presenter. And here the affair takes on its definitive form: that of the perfect brawl, the brawl in which there is no longer a single camp in which two opponents find themselves, even by mistake, on the same side. The Report journalists are opposed to Rai, which would like to bring them into line; against the two presenters, Presutti and Piervincenzi, whom Rai sends them; and, to a large extent, also against Ranucci, whose name has for days ceased to appear in their documents as a demand and now appears merely as a circumstance. Ranucci, for his part, is against Rai, against the two presenters (“those who betray and those who speculate… mediocre choices”), and above all against the Report journalists, whom he has branded on Facebook as “Trojan horses planted within the editorial team by the company to undermine my confidence”. Trojan horses.

The correspondents with whom he has shared twenty years of investigations, lawsuits, security details and prime-time slots have been dismissed in a single line, as if they were enemy cavalry sneaking in. The statement in which the correspondents reject the two new presenters has the merit of consistency, if only with its own contradiction. Forty-eight hours earlier, they had written to Corsini stating that bringing in a presenter from outside would amount to a takeover, yet Rai brought in one from outside and one from within, assuming that the maths would suffice. It did not. Piervincenzi is rejected because he is an outsider to Report; Presutti, who was the youngest member of Ranucci’s team, because she lacks experience – which means that the condition set did not concern origin but perhaps identity, and that the only admissible candidate was the one who was not put forward. The proposal, they write, is inadmissible. And if it is not withdrawn, they will all leave together.

Rai responds in the only language it knows: that of official statements. Both Presutti and Piervincenzi are winners of the Rai recruitment competition, and Presutti even came top of the rankings. The threat of an exodus remains – a threat that is always the most solemn yet the least likely to be carried out, because to leave, one needs somewhere else to go. For the Report correspondents, that ‘elsewhere’ would be La7, and rumours from television circles suggest that Giorgio Mottola, the best-known of Report’s journalists, has been approached in a completely informal capacity. Mottola denies this, and he should be believed. But it is telling that La7 has become, in this story, the universal waiting room – the place where everyone knows someone but no one has a contract – and where, incidentally, Ranucci had already phoned last year to enquire, only to receive from Urbano Cairo himself, in Il Foglio in July, a ‘for goodness’ sake’ uttered with his hand over his mouth.

Next Wednesday, 2 September, they will take stock. Editor-in-chief Corsini – who yesterday wrote to Ranucci whilst on holiday in Scotland – has summoned the entire team, some fifty people including journalists, writers and technical staff, to the blue room at the production centre in Via Teulada, which is the largest one there. Meanwhile, Ranucci is considering how to challenge the three bids. The fan, as you will have gathered, is there to create a draught. And two months after it was discovered that Valter had planted the bomb, this farce is far from over. We are immersed in it, as if in a well, from the neck down. Here is the proof. Here is Ranucci: “I will not be presenting Report, but I will be waging the most important battle of my life for press freedom; I will do it for my children and for yours.” And this is the first time a trade union dispute has been entrusted to posterity.