On Tuesday evening, Marco Damilano spoke about the refugee emergency in Lampedusa, a dramatic situation reminiscent of a biblical exodus: By 9 p.m., more than 4,000 people had disembarked on countless fragile boats. The island is collapsing, the memorandum with Tunisia doesn’t work, just like the one with Libya didn’t work. To describe the tragedy of the situation, Damilano had to connect first with an Ansa journalist from Lampedusa and then with a “Huff Post” journalist from Strasbourg, as if Rai journalists did not exist or were employed elsewhere.
Even if he will never admit it, Damilano seems like a survivor: like one of the protagonists of “Lost”, he now moves in an unknown and hostile environment, the horse has become a dragon and the building on Viale Mazzini is a brightly lit prison. It seems like no one knows who is being held hostage (we are always someone’s hostage). The voice is that of the penitent, even if there is no television without penance. And in fact, in the opening episode of the new season of “The Tower and the Horse” (Rai3), he invited Cardinal Matteo Maria Zuppi to talk about the peace missions in Russia, Ukraine and then in China, but also about the presence of the Church in forgotten areas like Caivano. In his heart, these places all agreed with Viale Mazzini and its surroundings.
Damilano would like the character of the resistance fighter more, the last supporter of in-depth analysis, now that Rai even has a director of in-depth analysis, now that Bruno Vespa’s strip has started again on Rai1 and Manuela Moreno wants to go deeper than the sea in the Ranks of the Profound. It’s even endearing when Damilano says that “pluralism is a public service duty and a public right.” But at least it gives us some confidence in the future.
It is not easy to summarize the on-field news and the broader commentary in a story of about ten minutes, also because the new Rai3 does not yet have a precise individuality and until recently the broadcast successfully oscillated between the more traditional and the more identifying audience than Rai3. Come on guys, Nunzia De Girolamo is coming!