Salvini: 4 minute interview on Tg1, the Democratic Party: “Megaphone of vulgar propaganda”. The newspaper’s cdr: “Public service must be impartial”

There is a clash over the interview lasting over four minutes on Tg1 at 8pm Matteo Salvini in which the deputy prime minister attacks the robes, intertwining the Albania case and the Open Arms case. The Democratic Party protests by speaking of the Northern League’s “megaphone of vulgar propaganda”. The head of the newspaper also intervenes, recalling that “the public service must be impartial” and warning: “Equidistance is undermined”. The Northern League replies that “the dems want to gag Rai”.

The interview arrives at the height of the clash between the government and the judiciary, with Nordio defining as “abnormal” the sentence of the Rome court which establishes the return to Italy of the migrants sent to the Albanian center wanted by Giorgia Meloni. Citing the migrants re-moved to Bari, Salvini declares: “If one of these twelve committed a crime tomorrow, robbed, raped, killed someone, who would pay the consequences? The magistrate who brought them back to Italy?”. “I would like to know why of all the workers who pay for their mistakes, magistrates never pay,” he adds. Then he moves on to the Open Arms trial, in which he is accused, claiming that “some magistrate overturns the popular vote and the government’s laws”.

“Salvini’s delusional rally on Tg1 attacking the judges who do their work according to the laws and the Constitution – thunders the secretary of the dem Elly Schlein – . Rai debased as a megaphone of a government that wants to dismantle the separation of powers by attacking the judiciary. It’s not possible, we won’t let them.”

The note from the editorial committee of the flagship Rai newspaper arrives: “We believe that the over four minutes of interview with Minister Salvini, accused in the Open Arms trial, broadcast in the 8pm edition of the news, have undermined one of the principles of basis of our profession: the equidistance between the subjects we are called to deal with”.

“Public service information must always be impartial and never perceived as only belonging to one party – continues the cdr –. We expect that, in view of the December ruling, the same amount of space will be granted to civil parties”.

The Northern League’s rejoinder attacking the Democratic Party is of a completely different tone: “Solidarity with the RAI journalists who dare to provide information, without bowing to the Democratic Party which now threatens the public service and would like to gag it”.