The recent That’s journalism! prize, which I believe is the richest or one of the richest we can come across, consisting of 30 million old Italian liras, created a few years ago and boasting a founder jury that numbers the category’s ‘patriarchal’ triad Biagi, Bocca and Montanelli, was awarded to Antonio Ricci for Striscia la Notizia.
I have so far only read some stock comments and interviews to ‘journalism’s two senators’ and to Ricci to the effect “Would Montanelli have agreed? But of course”, or “But isn’t Striscia more satire than information? That’s true, but we considered that…”, and so on. And instead the prize’s genre, starting from its title that is so clearly representational, the standing of the jury, which is the best in the guild of journalists, and the choice made could have deserved and could yet deserve journalistic investigation that reaches beyond the rules of a special prize. Why is the prize undeserved? You must be kidding, it is greatly deserved; it even comes late in the day if it is true that many have maintained for years that Striscia la Notizia is “Italy’s best news bulletin”. Certainly this programme boasts the highest audience on TV.

To be precise, after the vox populi that half seriously considered Striscia a news broadcast and the Auditel award for audience ratings, now there comes this “pontifical” prize to journalistically certify the programme, acting as a bridge between the two sides. Hence if Antonio Ricci’s product is the best contemporary example of journalism, after being taken for about three lustra for a moment dedicated to satire and crap, probably Biagi, Bocca and company should make use of their professional lineage to stigmatize the state of journalism and, if at all, to move from prizes to punishments rather than award a prize to Ricci. Let us briefly consider why, after outlining Striscia’s ‘case-history’. The programme was designed in the typical style of variety shows and cabarets in the early ’80s, following Drive In’s success and a series of attempts, more ‘noble’ or however of greater ‘journalistic’ worth, that did not meet with a similar fate such as Emilio and L’araba fenice - the whole under the aegis of satire. Ricci parodied and mimed news broadcasts, alternating anchormen, veline [show girls] and the news. Note: Berlusconi had not entered politics as yet neither did he even televise newscasts, and the Mammì law was still only in Craxi’s mind. In short, neither Biagi, nor Bocca nor Montanelli would ever have awarded Ricci a prize at the time... After building up the parody, and while Mentana courageously tackled his first news broadcasts on Canale 5, giving Italians a large measure of news ignored by RAI news bulletins, which were certainly screened and also subpolitical, Ricci concentrated less on making a parody of “rival” newscasts and he too started giving more news.

The latter implicitly parodied the so-called serious news bulletins by giving out information they did not give. Gabibbo, the sublimation of the masked civil defender typical of the commedia dell’arte, theoretically and practically prepared from a social viewpoint (to which I contributed, limitedly but directly, with my programme Radiozorro and its continuous contacts with Ricci and his editorial staff) and also extremely useful, was conceived in the mid ‘90s. Ricci decidedly toughened his creation by endowing it with all it lacked, features that were also obviously absent in the news broadcasts he made fun of – in other words a clear view of reality that was free of party serfdom, traditional patterns and basic parody filters and which, on the other hand, was useful to parody itself. Hence if the context was “ridicule”, Striscia could gradually move to the higher authorities, both economic and political, because after all “it was only satire”. They were first mocked from the television studios and then related with the Italian news nobody or hardly anyone ever mentioned – the whole in a TV prime time context. Now B&B tell us That’s journalism! I should think so! Ricci and I have bitterly and periodically laughed over the subject for years (in 1995 I put forward the idea, with RAI’s present general manager, of televising Videozorro at 8:00 p.m. on Rai Two, before the news bulletin – Gabibbo did not exist at the time. Now they rave after the audience ratings achieved even by Striscia’s Gabibbo, and complain about Fatti, Max&Tux, Zingare and so on). This is journalism, to be sure, but the rest is not, it is not anymore and it is not up to the standard. What stands before our very eyes - crushed psychologically and professionally by politics and psychologically and economically by employers, under the combined rule of both masters, doubtful about new technologies, slippery from a trade union viewpoint and, in short, on the look out for a cultural meaning and identity, irrespective of the existence of a Berlusconi, the many subBerlusconis or various antiBerlusconis - is not at all journalism to me. It is closely or distantly related to advertising in a mainly product-selling process, when originally it had to be an informative report. Call it a debate on satire! But naturally, once on shore, we pray no more….

Translated by interpres sas

Photo: Alberto Pugliese