The TV of power

If, in the mid-1950s, the newly born television fascinated viewers because it could transport them to an unknown world, today, the high-definition images of the latest generation screens are our privileged interface with the reality that surrounds us, a glimpse into a world without distances, where everyday history seems to float without ever taking shape. Early television spurred curiosity, pushed experience, and made claims, primarily that of being an honest teacher of life capable of transmitting culture and progress, and everyone felt invested with an objective responsibility in this process. Entire generations learned to use the Italian language thanks to TV, to push beyond the confines of the familiar piazza and bell tower, to directly experience an entire world that had suddenly revealed itself through the screen.

But while it's true that the passage of time hasn't worn out television, but rather has multiplied its reach, its function has significantly changed: from a stimulus for knowledge with a specific cultural project shaping its programming to a pure and simple platform for an increasingly self-referential political power. Incapable of inflaming the streets and speaking out for people's needs, it uses mass media—TV and social media first and foremost—to shape reality for its own gain.
Understanding the potential of images, politics immediately sought to appropriate them, to use TV to build consensus and tame consciences, but initially at least with a certain style and ensuring a minimum of pluralism.

Then came the era of private networks dominated and owned by Silvio Berlusconi that ushered in a new era for television, increasingly ephemeral and vulgar to better speak to people's gut feelings, far from any mission other than to lower the cultural level of viewers (after several decades of hammering, mission accomplished).
For several years, the rise of sovereignists, the crisis of democratic values, the proliferation of wars, the right-wing forces advancing, governing, and imposing themselves everywhere, have gradually aligned all media outlets, especially television, with the new power advancing and dictating its policies shamelessly and, increasingly, openly resorting to blackmail or threats.

The reality that TV imposes on us today is one designed by political power, pre-digested and tailor-made, skillfully constructed to glorify the powerful of the day, without ever engaging in debate; always, if possible, imbued with verbal violence; a pernicious terrain that has also infected the opposition. Thus, the show of opposing hatreds continues successfully, and, when that's not enough, Artificial Intelligence comes into play.
Trump, as usual, leads the way: he flies a fighter jet wearing a king's crown and smears manure on his protesters. Or, if you prefer, here he is dressed as King Arthur/Charlemagne before a group of subjects who bend the knee and bow their heads in submission to the sovereign... it seems impossible, yet people turn on the TV and applaud the stunt.

Michelangelo Dotta
NP November 2025