Why I’ve changed my mind about Rai being publicly owned

The good news is that Rai Uno has broadcast a fine adaptation of San Francesco by Roberto Benigni. The bad news is that for years now, nobody has referred to Rai as Italy’s ‘leading cultural organisation’ any more. This shift in perspective is the result of the crisis affecting its historic brand, the decline in the quality of its programmes, and the disaffection of the public and the cultural world – who once loved Rai dearly but have since changed their minds.

Beyond the parties’ morbid interest, state ownership has historically been underpinned by a strong commitment to public service and high-quality programming. Today, these reasons no longer apply and, consequently, public ownership no longer makes sense.

In 2002, for long enough to understand how it worked, I served on the board of directors of Rai. I joined the board believing that its public nature was a given, but after a few months I became convinced of the opposite, and over the years this conviction has only grown stronger.

To put it plainly, across its three channels and three news programmes, Rai certainly does not provide a greater public service than La7, Sky or many regional channels. These broadcasters will, sooner or later, demand a share of the licence fee currently enjoyed by Rai.

A large part of its programming now has a commercial nature identical to that of private broadcasters. Its news coverage is often outdone by the competition in terms of comprehensiveness and, alas, sometimes in terms of objectivity. In most of the most popular sports – starting with football, tennis and motor racing – Rai has ceded ground to private channels, which Italian sports fans access by paying a not inconsiderable fee.

Furthermore, in a political system as intrusive as Italy’s, a corporate governance model which, by its very nature as a party-political arrangement, was not designed to promote professional autonomy, simply cannot work. A governance model that exposes the organisation to political influence, including from the Parliamentary Supervisory Commission itself. Like any other organisation, Rai, to regain its former glory, needs its owner – the Italian state – to appoint high-calibre directors and set clear objectives. Then, once the direction and objectives have been established, it needs broad professional freedom on how to achieve them. The accounts are settled at the end of the term of office, not every minute and second.

A company that, in four years, has been unable to appoint a chairman due to political deadlock can clearly manage without one. Its board of directors is appointed by the government and Parliament on the basis of political criteria. The Parliamentary Supervisory Commission is made up of MPs who represent legitimate but partisan political interests. Despite its abnormally high number of employees, consultants and various contractors, Rai outsources a large proportion of its programmes. A company like this, facing fierce competition from the private sector, cannot survive. Everyone can see it, everyone knows it, but no one is doing anything about it.

For example. A few days ago marked the 100th anniversary of the birth of Alberto Ronchey, author of major international political reports for Rai. This occasion reminded us of a time, even relatively recent, when Rai was brimming with journalists of an extraordinary calibre. Today, some of them, such as Fabiano Fabiani and Emmanuele Milano, can tell us about those years. Others are no longer with us, such as Arrigo Levi, Furio Colombo, Andrea Barbato, Demetrio Volcic, Piero Angela, Igor Man, Jader Jacobelli, Emilio Rossi, Livio Zanetti, Enzo Biagi, Sergio Zavoli, Nando Martellini, Sandro Paternostro, Tito Stagno and, most recently, David Sassoli. Today, the greats of Rai, from Corrado Augias to Fabio Fazio, are passing away.

Faced with this decline and such a loss of credibility, it would be a serious mistake to continue to stand by and watch the decline without taking action. Let us put forward a working hypothesis. The Italian state could put two channels up for sale and retain one for itself, alongside non-commercial channels such as Rai Storia, Rai Movie and Rai 4.

The public broadcaster should operate solely on licence fee revenue, without advertising, and produce exclusively public service programmes. It should provide high-quality, independent news coverage on a full-time basis, entrusted to a distinguished journalist of integrity. Ownership should lie with a foundation—itself a public body—with a Board of Directors appointed through a system similar to that used to select judges for the Constitutional Court: one third by Parliament, one third by the President of the Republic, and one third by academics from the Lincei Academy.

This is one of many possible solutions to the Rai problem, and it is by no means certain that it is the best one. The point is that if the issue is not tackled soon, with courage and imagination, in a few years’ time Italy will find itself having to resolve a problem just as difficult as that of Ilva, but one that is politically far more sensitive.

A final observation. There are many high-calibre professionals working at Rai who have remained deeply loyal to it even in difficult times. Just as public ownership is a dogma for many MPs, so it was for me. We must ask all those who defend Rai’s state ownership, with the utmost respect, to consider its current state and to assess how unrealistic it is to think that things can change without a radical overhaul.