If Rai censors Scurati and April 25th and Serena Bortone doesn't fit: the message of complaint

Serena Bortone she is someone who has accustomed us not to mince words or half truths. The presenter did it in this case too, choosing to say out loud what in her opinion was wrong with Rai during the Meloni era. Let's take a step back: in its transmission What will be, broadcast on Saturday 20 April on Rai 3, the writer Antonio Scurati was supposed to read a monologue on April 25th. This intervention he will no longer be there and not even the presenter of the program – a very serious matter – knows why.

«As you will have read in the press release, in this evening's episode of What will be a monologue was expected Antonio Scurati on the 25 April. I learned last night, with dismay, and by pure chance, that Scurati's contract had been cancelled. I couldn't get any plausible explanations. But first of all I owe it to Scurati, with whom I obviously just spoke on the phone, and to you viewers, the explanation of why they won't see the writer on air on my program on Raitre tonight. The problem is that I wasn't able to get this explanation either”, Bortone says via social media.

Antonio Scurati, we remember, wrote several books on fascism and Mussolini, such as the famous one M. The son of the century, with which he won the Strega award in 2019, thanking them with these words: «I dedicate the victory to our grandfathers and our fathers, who were first seduced and then oppressed by fascism, especially those among them who found the courage to fight it with weapons in hand. I would also like to dedicate the award to our children, with the hope that they will not have to go back to living what we lived one hundred years ago, especially to my daughter Lucia.”

The political reactions were immediate (and understandable). «We learned this morning that from tonight's episode of What will be, the program hosted in prime time by Serena Bortone on Rai3, the scheduled monologue by Antonio Scurati on April 25th has been cancelled. All this for a direct intervention by the Rai management a few hours after the broadcast, without any communication to the author and presenter of the program”, we read in a note from Democratic Party Senator Francesco Verducci, member of the Rai Supervisory Commission, “This is a very serious case of censorship against Scurati. It is a very serious case of violation of the editorial autonomy of a program, as well as a disturbing de facto intimidation towards the author and presenter Serena Bortone, the authors of the program, and by extension all the Rai authors. The Rai President must intervene with the CEO and Director to clarify this matter. We are in the presence of a very serious act of censorship and abuse, which cannot be accepted.”

And furthermore, the M5S exponent in the Rai supervisory commission Dolores Bevilacqua and the M5S group leader in the culture commission in the Senate Luca Pirondini add: «Rai will have to answer our question in the supervisory commission. Does it have anything to do with the fact that the author should have performed a monologue about April 25th? Are issues such as culture and anti-fascism really so scary for the Melonian Rai? There would still be time for the company to retrace its steps and review this absurd decision, which stinks of censorship from a mile away.”