The Italians who called it ‘Striscia la notizia’, so different from the ‘righteous’ of ‘Report’

‘Striscia la Notizia’ is dying – or rather, ‘going on hiatus’, to use the company’s euphemism. Thirty-eight years on, with the final episode airing in February. The end of an era. But which era? My earliest memory of ‘Striscia’ is Stefano Salvi’s interview with Enrico Cuccia. I’d never seen anything like it. Nowadays, when I occasionally revisit it on YouTube, it strikes me as a Marina Abramović performance. There was this reporter in a yellow jacket walking alongside Italy’s most powerful and elusive man – the ‘grand old man’ of Mediobanca, who, at the sight of a camera, would lower his gaze and slip away – and whilst the reporter questioned him about the links between finance and politics, Cuccia, for the entire walk, did not answer, did not react, did not even snort. He walked in silence. Hands behind his back, silent, unflinching: fifty years of Italian capitalism condensed into an imperturbable stride and a moment of great television. “The most eloquent silence in the entire history of television,” wrote Aldo Grasso. In those three minutes lay the entire methodology of “Striscia”, embodying both the best and the worst of all the investigative television that had emerged in recent years.

Antonio Ricci recounted that the idea for “Striscia” came to him in the shower: “I was thinking about the fact that Vespa had said on TV that Valpreda was to blame for the Piazza Fontana bombing… well, that wasn’t right; we needed a programme after the news that would present a different perspective, one that would at least cast some doubt on the matter”. So, ‘Striscia’ was the exact opposite of ‘Report’ – and I mean that as a compliment, of course. Because whilst Ranucci’s ‘Report’ – as Giuliano Ferrara recalls today – was often variety show material passed off as a scoop, ‘Striscia’ did the reverse, and was therefore more honest: scoops passed off as variety show material. An exposé disguised as a snigger, an investigation entrusted to a giant red puppet who, by his own creator’s admission, “represents populism, gut instinct; he doesn’t speak: he belches”. Reread the list, going off the cuff a little: the scam involving Vanna Marchi and her miracle salts; depleted uranium; the two Iraqi warships photographed in La Spezia during the Gulf War; the 2,639 beagles rescued from the Green Hill kennels; the ‘Terra dei fuochi’ before it became a ‘Savianised’ area.

The Italy of "Report" is one of grave demeanour, of the presenter who sets himself up as the nation’s last bastion of righteousness. The Italy of "Striscia" is the one that would hand a tapir to someone, waiting for their reaction. Within the multiverse created by Antonio Ricci – Gabibbo, the tapir, the correspondent with a drain cleaner on his head – the "veline" were the most misunderstood chapter. For a whole section of moralistic, prudish Italy, devoted to the Espresso group, the category was an insult. The ‘velina’ was seen as ‘moral decay’, ‘women’s bodies’, an emblem of Berlusconism, and so on. Antonio Ricci renamed them ‘carline’ for a while, precisely as a tribute to De Benedetti. He explained that two of the girls in the editorial office were nicknamed ‘Espresso’ and ‘Panorama’, because the covers of those very opinion weeklies – which claimed to lecture television on morality – were full of female bodies on display. One could debate endlessly whether the ‘velina’ act was liberation or a patriarchal cage, an assertion of freedom or ‘objectification’. But when in doubt, we have always been wary of forms of feminism that would have preferred the ‘veline’ to wear chadors. Thirty-eight years of "Striscia la Notizia" are a national autobiography. And one day we will need to read and analyse the incalculable number of reports received by the editorial team of Antonio Ricci’s programme over all these years – an average of three thousand a week (do the maths yourselves). We’re all in there: the one with the annoying neighbour, the person reporting their hated brother-in-law’s building violations, the mythomaniac, the madman, the frustrated soul – and especially in the early days, when reports came in via the answering machine, quite a few would-be suicides. Instead of calling a relative, a friend or the police, they’d ring ‘Striscia’.

When I first stepped inside the “Striscia” studios in Cologno, I was deeply impressed by the memorabilia in this hangar-cum-museum. It was a sort of mad, libertarian enclave within the Mediaset complex: smashed tapirs, crutches, hospital reports, and Staffelli’s protective mask from after he broke his nasal septum when Fabrizio Del Noce hurled a microphone at his face. A shrine. A place of remembrance for this blessed country.