The lost reality

After months of total silence, autumn and early winter of the past year, in which the right-wing government, consistent with its position on the matter, effectively canceled Covid, in January , as an Epiphany gift to the general television audience, commercials appeared, edited by the Ministry of Health, which timidly urge vaccination. Better late than never, you would say more than one, but honestly, in terms of public health, it seems like a decidedly modest effort given the numbers of infections, hospitals in difficulty and emergency rooms under attack. And there is a clear discrepancy in terms of health strategy between a solitary commercial that appears on the screen once and the daily presence on national and regional news of long and detailed reports on the wave of infections and the consequent problems in terms of hospitalizations and care. But the long arm of political control over information becomes evident in terms of numbers and experts in the sector, both of which have totally disappeared in television narration; no statistics, no pandemic curve, no official black and white data.

It is better to gloss over the situation and instead focus on the bold figures who manage power and animate the national political debate, they who, in black and white, seem to live on the screens and on social media to best express their thoughts in connection directed with the insatiable appetites of the noble belly of the Italians. It is now a torrential downpour of presenteeism that seems unstoppable, a circle that officially opens with the stainless faces of the politician of the moment, Prime Minister Meloni in the lead, busy chairing commissions, taking part in meetings, inaugurating construction sites and taking part (alas) in exhausting sessions of the Council of Ministers, and ends with the all-round lexical gurgling expressed in questionable Italian on the various platforms that bring the powerful so close to the user to the point of almost feeling them as a companion. Television and the journalistic apparatus in general have always lent themselves to acting as a bass drum for the politicians of the moment, it is always easier to defend and flatter power rather than attack it, but television information these days, amidst censorship, gag laws, omissions and silent obedience to the guidelines given by the control rooms really seems to have lost the reality and the real significance of the events.

The sordid and anachronistic celebration of Acca Larentia, for example, a repugnant and unconstitutional sequence, from a simple news story has slowly transformed into a mantra that bounces daily from news to news, opens and closes debates, fuels controversies, ignites souls and whispers to nostalgic spirits: from an isolated episode, however indecent, the Roman greeting immortalized by images continuously re-proposed in various ways, has become viral, thus watering down its negative charge and gradually earning a passport of impunity guaranteed by the cathode ray tube... Meanwhile the Italians digest everything and quickly forget, unfortunately.


Michelangelo Dotta
NP February 2024