Selvaggia Lucarelli and Candida Morvillo
Candida Morvillo: “We journalists should bring out the good in people, not the worst. Things must change”
The death of the restaurateur Giovanna Pedretti highlighted the possible consequences of becoming a social media “star”. First seen as a sort of “champion of justice” for having responded in kind to a homophobic customer (all published on Facebook), the woman ended up being considered a “swindler” after the accusations, well supported by evidence, of Lorenzo Biagiarelli And Selvaggia Lucarelli on the alleged falsity of the aforementioned post.
So, after an “aggressive” service by Tg3 ended up in the Rai Supervisory Commission where the woman was asked to account for the accusations made by the two influencers, she was found dead last Sunday morning. Now, faced with the tragedy, it is natural to ask not only what happened to Giovanna Pedretti, but what weight did the media storm have in all of this. To try to understand more, Affaritaliani.it he talked about it with the journalist and writer Candida Morvillo.
Biagiarelli, later taken up by Selvaggia Lucarelli, was the first to “bring to light” the alleged falsity of the post published on Facebook. How involved are the two “influencers” in the tragedy?
“First of all, Biagiarelli And Lucarelli they claim to have debunked, claiming the total falsity of the post published by Pedretti. In reality, as it has not yet been confirmed that it was a suicide, it is not yet certain that the post is really a fake.
Therefore, when you build a very large community of followers who look for you every day to find 'the victim of the day', if you feed this type of story to the 'crowd' it is clear that you have a responsibility. For this reason, even more so, knowing their audience is not exactly 'soft', they should have paid much more attention.”
Although Biagiarelli is not a journalist but a chef, didn't Selvaggia Lucarelli simply do his job?
“Actually, neither Selvaggia Lucarelli she is a journalist, since she is not registered with the Order. However, the question is not who investigated. What should interest you is that the fruit of this 'investigation' has been presented as an absolute truth. I would have used the conditional tense much more to deal with the matter…”.
Can influencers be dangerous?
“We shouldn't generalize, but many news cases lead in this direction. The moment an influencer exposes a topic to his audience as if he were throwing a bone to the dogs, then in that moment it becomes dangerous ”.
What can we learn from this tragedy to improve the world of information?
“We journalists have the important responsibility to always verify the news. A self-criticism of our profession is certainly that of having to ascertain more about what we are talking about. Then, we should review the way we tell stories social controversies. In fact, we tend to tell them regardless of the objective truth and to chase them for a simple reason: because they very often get clicks and audiences. On this front we should pay a little more attention, without fueling the worst sides of people. And this, of course, also applies to influencers.
Looking instead at the sociological aspect of the story, this tragedy teaches us that there exists a society based on judgment and easy criticism that often ignores the facts. We're talking about human beings and what's going on with the digital communication it's a real one dehumanization. Rampant, I might add. Today, many define their identity by attacking others. It's not how much we hate or judge someone that defines us, but it's what good we do. We should remind ourselves of the true values of life.
Ultimately, the world of information should stop leveraging hatred, negativity, uncertainty and aggression, but should instead nourish hope and the beauty of life in people. The real responsibility of us communications professionals should be this, that is, seeking consensus without bringing out the worst in people.”
It's as if we've all gotten angry…
“The keyword of the entire decade should be 'frustration.' People are increasingly frustrated and, certainly, these times of economic and political uncertainty do not help. The lack of a horizon of hope and personal fulfillment has brought so much negativity to people, which slowly turns into aggression towards others.”
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