“We prefer to lose one or several days of salary rather than lose our freedom, convinced that the freedom and autonomy of public service is a value for everyone. And the RAI belongs to everyone,” the workers have said.
The journalists of Italian public television and radio, RAIthey maintain this Monday a 24 hour strike to “defend their autonomy and independence” from “political control” and “censorship attempts.”
The 24-hour strike comes after weeks of protests by workers over what they define as a “asphyxiating control” so that the information serves as a “megaphone” for the Executive of the far-right Giorgia Meloni, a complaint to which the political opposition has joined, accusing the management of having turned RAI into “Telemeloni”. Meanwhile, management accuses the convening union, Usagrai, of spreading “fake news.”
In a statement read this morning on the network, it is mentioned that “RAI tried to censor a monologue on April 25, and then, with obvious difficulties, tried to turn it into an economic issue”, in reference to the veto of the writer Antonio Scurati.
“We prefer to lose one or several days of salary rather than lose our freedom, convinced that the freedom and autonomy of public service It is a value for everyone. And the RAI belongs to everyone,” the workers add. The company replies, however, that “the decision to go on strike for reasons that have nothing to do with workers’ rights falls within ideological and policies”.
The Italian National Press Federation (FNSI) considers “very serious” the accusation of spreading “false news” to “discredit” “hundreds of colleagues” and actually considers it “a massive distraction operation, to hide what is really happening in the public service.”
Scurati’s is the latest of several cases in which Meloni has been accused of censorship or of using public media to her advantage, such as the departure of journalist Fabio Fazio from RAI, after four successful decades in the public broadcaster, or the modification of the regulations for interventions in electoral campaigns, which ends the time limit on television interventions by politicians with institutional positions.
Source: Eitb
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