“My ‘Wild West’ is different from ‘Report’, there will be politics only if it serves the story”

2023-11-24 16:43:34

“‘Far West’ will be different from ‘Report’. Someone wrote that we are the anti ‘Report’. In reality we are an in-depth program that wants to try to bring quality to its story, we have no prejudices towards anyone and we let’s wait until the public doesn’t have any feelings towards us either. Politics? If it helps the story, welcome, otherwise we’ll tell the stories without politics”. Salvo Sottile thus presents his ‘Far West’, the new investigative and in-depth program with which the reporter returns to prime time on Rai3 starting from Monday 27 November. A program that collects a heavy legacy, the one left vacant by Ranucci’s ‘Report’ moved to Sundays.

“I take the baton from a program called ‘Report’ and I feel the weight of Monday prime time on Rai 3 very much, as does the responsibility of leading a group”, says the journalist. Which gets to the heart of the presentation of the program: “We wanted to call it ‘Far West’ because the word has now entered the collective imagination, it is said every time a sensational event happens explains Sottile – I thank Rai and Paolo Corsini for giving me the possibility of returning to my job as a reporter”. The objective is “to talk about border lands, to illuminate the darkest corners to give voice to the weak – says the host – We want to make an honest, clean programme, a pure journalistic programme, where the investigative part will be predominant”. A “public service program, with which we want to present ourselves to the country to reassure it, to say ‘we are here and we are on your side'”, he adds.

The team will be made up of a team of “very young reporters, of whom I am proud – says Sottile – We will try to get into the stories with an immersive story, almost a diary”. In each episode three lines of investigation: “There is a first investigation that moves along the threads of in-depth analysis, a second that is a little more social, a third that is a pure story, a dry investigation without frills and in which the story happens without any mediation”. In the first episode we start with a bang: we go from the massacre in Via d’Amelio and the death of Borsellino, with the exclusive testimony of the lawyer Fabio Trizzino, Borsellino’s son-in-law, to a sensational fraud against the State, up to a story of sexual blackmail involving two women and a footballer.

Strict current events will not be ignored, “we must keep a lateral look at current events even if ‘I don’t do ‘La vita in Diretta’ – Sottile points out – We are contemporaries and we know what is happening but what we are asked to do is to delve deeper, and to carry out investigations it takes long months of work.”

“With ‘Far West’ the page of the ’23 ’24 season offer closes – explains the head of Rai Insights Paolo Corsini – I am particularly satisfied because it is a program that is based on investigative reports on the country, and is in line with what was requested in the draft service which is being concluded. Regardless of the controversy, we are therefore in line and adding this prime time which completes not only the offer of the in-depth analysis department but also that of investigative journalism”. And if “the talk genre shows a bit of weakness overall – adds Corsini – the story of the country and of reality, if well packaged, continues to find excellent feedback”. The comparison with ‘Report’? “This is another offer, with a different approach in the traditional space of investigation”, Corsini cuts short.