"Thank you, for being here despite having lost credibility." Controversy and crowds for Report host Sigfrido Ranucci, who thus opened the presentation of his book "The return of the caste" in Asiago (Vicenza).
"I have been dealing with these things since 2000, when I found Borsellino's tape and they asked for my dismissal", says Ranucci without however referring to the new attacks against him today dedicated to the words of Angela Camuso, a journalist who accused him of incorrect behaviour, words which have opened a new front.
But at the time, Ranucci still recalls when talking about the past, "there was a gentleman in Rai, called Zaccaria, who defended me. And then the investigations ended with a dismissal".
Ranucci, still speaking in front of a large number of people, underlined: "The big problem of this new wave is the pain that I have to collect from the people who are close to me these days. For two and a half months now I have been traveling with an average of 200 articles a day, of which two thirds are full of falsehoods, even from newspapers you wouldn't expect it from. Obviously I can't waste the time denying everything because it would be impossible." However, "the only luck is that in a few weeks my son will become a lawyer".
In the meantime, it is above all Fratelli d'Italia who point the finger at the presenter after the journalist's words.
"The feeling that remained with me is dismay. I didn't report it but something broke inside me", Angela Camuso, the journalist and writer, told ANSA who, in a letter to the newspaper Il Tempo, said she had received "advances" from Ranucci in the hours and days following a job interview held in 2018 at the Rai headquarters in via Teulada to collaborate with Report.
"It certainly wasn't the first time that someone tried - he explains - but I didn't expect it from him. I had worked with Milena Gabanelli, so I don't know, for me Ranucci, host of a program like Report, represented what he then represented to everyone until what happened in recent months happened.
No one questioned his righteousness. It's as if the world had fallen on me a bit, my faith in the future was broken inside me, this thing remained inside me for a long time."
Words that open a new front of discussion.
"There is a theme that generally unites all parties, and that is respect for women and the fight against gender inequalities", says Fratelli d'Italia senator Elena Leonardi, vice president of the Feminicide commission in the Senate, opening the day of confrontation.
Her party echoes Sara Kelany, member of the Rai Supervisory Commission, who points the finger at ''the deafening silence of the left''.
Or again the Fratelli d'Italia deputy, Augusta Montaruli, according to whom ''the Public Service cannot tolerate that a presenter, thanks to his media exposure, feels entitled to exploit his position of pre-eminence for personal purposes, be it interns or journalists looking for a job opportunity''.
On the same front, Susanna Donatella Campione, senator of the Brothers of Italy, is convinced that: ''increasingly disturbing shadows are growing over Sigfrido Ranucci's "working" relationships with women''.
Forza Italia senator Maurizio Gasparri, member of the Rai Supervisory Board, comments: ''It will all be false. Meanwhile, like him, we tell, we read, we collect and then in the end we rely on the doubtful formula: it might not be true. But is Rai evaluating all these behaviors?''.
And while the M5s leader Giuseppe Conte speaks of a ''crusade against Report'', from the Democratic Party, Senator Walter Verini, underlines that "Certain statements made in these hours by exponents of the right are incredible and unacceptable: instead of respecting and waiting for the work of the Judiciary, it is declared using methods similar to Orban, they would like to use a sponge blow to erase - with the Report investigations - pieces of Italian history, mafia events, massacres, complicity with politics".
Meanwhile Ranucci thinks about defending himself alone and speaking of the condition of journalism in Italy, he says that "I have not yet seen, despite everyone's mouth full, a politician whose first point on the agenda is freedom of information and defending your right to be informed".
"I would not like - he concludes - the concept to pass that the only freedom of the press to be defended or honored is that of dead journalists, because this is a serious fact. We are moving towards laws that are increasingly liberticidal".
