Italian culture minister faces censorship complaints after exchanging whistles for applause during speech broadcast on public television

The allegations of censorship came in Italy after public television RAI broadcast the Speech by a minister in Giorgia Meloni’s governmentwho was booed and whistled at a festival, but was modified with sound effects so that only applause is heard instead.

Culture Minister Gennaro Sangiuliano was booed and whistled by the audience when he spoke, but in the broadcast on the public channel There was only applause for the retouching done by the external production company in charge of recording it for RAI.according to local media and videos recorded by attendees and posted on social media.

The events took place in the Tabouk Literary Festival Galaat the Ancient Theatre of Taormina in Sicily (southern Italy), on June 22, when Sangiuliano went on stage to present an award to Nobel Prize winner Jon Fosse, but it was this Thursday when the broadcast went viral.

Given the controversy raised, lThe management of public television assured that it did not intervene or make any editing changes to Sangiuliano’s speech. As he pointed out, all of this was recorded, broadcast and provided to RAI by a production company hired by the Taormina Festival.

If the ‘largest cultural industry in the country’ is not even capable of verifying what it broadcasts, whoever runs the company must draw conclusions or demonstrate that they have solutions capable of meeting the legitimate expectations of citizens and employees.

“He took care of all aspects of production, without any involvement of RAI resources and staff,” the network said in a statement, noting that “will ask for explanations to clarify what happened”.

The incident has once again raised controversy and accusations of censorship in the country, where Meloni’s far-right executive has recently been accused of undermining freedom of expression and seeks to have greater control of public media to silence critical voices that question the official discourse.

The main union of journalists of the public channel, Usigrai, criticized what happened and regretted “the abyss into which the news product of the network has ended up”partly due to the outsourcing of services, with “content that ends up on RAI news programmes without any editorial control.”

“If the ‘largest cultural industry in the country’ is not even capable of verifying what it broadcasts, the person who runs the company must draw conclusions or demonstrate that he has solutions capable of meeting the legitimate expectations of citizens and employees,” Usigrai said in a statement.

The deputies of the opposition party, Democratic Party (PD) of the Culture Committee of the Italian Parliament, condemned what happened and described what happened as “shameful, worthy of Kim Jong Un’s state television”.

“This is the regime’s press, not the one with which Prime Minister Meloni clashes ideologically every day,” the same parliamentarians added.

Last May, journalists at the public broadcaster went on strike to “defend their autonomy and independence” from “political control” and “attempts at censorship”, while the political opposition has accused the management of having turned RAI into “Telemeloni”.

EFE