The new faces of RAI

Without making noise and much less clamor, indeed with a tacit change of the guard under the radar, the new busts of state television are the most visible avant-garde of the new political course of our country. Anyone who follows the Rai news out of love or simply out of habit cannot help but notice the multitude of faces, accents, postures and attires never seen before that appear on the screens of the house, a plethora of new tenants of the cathode ray tube like mushrooms after the outcome of the vote. The alternations comment on every change of government, the replacements in top roles cause a clamor and sadly inflame the opposition but it is the practice and, afterwards, everyone gives peace and the newly elected, even with important positions, occupy the coveted seats as a reward and disappear in the shadow.

On the contrary, the half-lengths of the news, begin in apnea and with some uncertain apprehension, the slow but constant conquest of the screen, by unknown emeritus relegated to the central and peripheral newsrooms, suddenly find themselves with the microphone in hand and the camera pointed straight in the face to comment on the most disparate services, ready to redeem the party card that they have jealously kept in their pockets for so long. Now they are the protagonists that we will get to know night after night, they are the new storytellers of the events of the world with whom we will have to take a vote of confidence, they are the new travel companions with whom we will share the beauties and uglinesses of the planet. The Rai news are among the most watched television broadcasts ever, constant audience ratings over time, fans of them, decisive outposts of politics, irreplaceable loudspeakers and bass drums as a follow-up and capillarity, but in the end it is the faces, the expressions and the look busts that retain the listener. But we must not stop at the aesthetics of the image alone, television, as well as sight, also solicits and imposes the simultaneous use of another sense of fundamental importance, hearing, speech, the verb that the oracle of turn deep to a more or less balanced extent and, alas, unfortunately more and more often grammatically very questionable.

We are not only talking about subjunctives and consecutio temporum of which traces have long been lost, but precisely about the most elementary rules of syntax combined with the new fashion of inventing new words that do not exist in our vocabulary from scratch, terms coined on the spot, live, or taken from the vulgate by bars, cripples and verbal ugliness that do not suit the presumed coat of arms of a state broadcaster. But anyhow... the long wave of a mediocre schooling combined with an exaggerated self-esteem has also reached the top of communication with all due respect to those who were still convinced of a real educational "mission" of television.

Michelangelo Dotta

NP Febbraio 2023