The mobilization of the Usigrai in recent weeks in defense of the 4-minute nighttime newscast and the Raisport nighttime newscast it really feels like a rearguard battle to us. Quite incomprehensible. At least on the level of information merit rather than on the economic one, where there is some reason (linked to overtime and nighttime bonuses).
We say rearguard because among the key issues of TV information one certainly concerns the proliferation of television news in an unjustified quantity compared to the real information needs. The 27-28 editions of the news are too many, far above what happens in other countries; some like Tg2 of the night broadcast at times that are never the same with very low ratings. Others, like the regional Tg3 at midnight, for only four minutes with more than marginal ratings: editions in which the repetition of news already said runs fast and tired (for a cost of 3 million euros per year).
It must be honestly recognized that such a proliferation as well as being diseconomica in itself, above all it does not serve the public and does not even make Rai information more timely and effective. Speaking of news, it would be appropriate to reflect, rather, on a greater differentiation of the offer and on a strengthening of the coverage of emergencies: the overlapping of the three main newscasts, sometimes with similar summaries and schedules, does not help to better inform the country.
In this the Usigrai should have the courage to take a few steps forward rather than defending the already known. Maybe even mobilize to defend a less enslaved journalism and microphone stand, without questions or investigations or campaigns of denunciation or support for causes worthy of civilian attention. Protest, why not, against a model of news that has become a kind of post Office that sorts the correspondence of the various politicians, with journalists making the letterbox of messages full of stereotyped obviousness, precooked slogans, without ever a real interview.
Unfortunately, the RAI union is on this absent, other than night news. When will a strike to refuse the performances that see the mortified journalists holding the microphone to gather on their backs, without a ba or a but, the statements of the politicians? A when a release to claim greater professional dignity, to say no to the practice of the press officers who establish the conditions of the guest on duty (questions, speakers, audience, sometimes even the type of filming)?
All things not inevitable, as long as there was a TV journalism capable of going to look for the news where it hides itself and not where some fly coach, and social, flaps its wings to say that it is there; a journalism that tails the facts and does not ‘chase’ (literally) the bearers of opinions (at the restaurant, under the house, on a lunch break), perhaps to snatch a perfectly useless sentence.
These are the battles to be fought for Usigrai. That for the night news we honestly do not understand.