Today, journalists at Italian public broadcaster RAI have called a one-day byline strike. The European Federation of Journalists (EFJ) joins them in denouncing the disastrous image given by Paolo Petrecca, the RAI sports director, throughout his commentary on the opening ceremony of the Milano Cortina Winter Olympics.
The Winter Olympic Games started with a slick ceremony last Friday at Milan’s San Siro stadium, but the event was marred for Italian TV viewers by a stream of on-air mistakes from the head of RAI’s sports division, Paolo Petrecca, who was appointed to the role in 2025. Today, RAI journalists omitted their names from the articles they produce in protest, and after the Games, they will go on strike for three days. They want Petrecca gone.
Petrecca welcomed viewers to Rome’s Stadio Olimpico instead of Milan’s San Siro, where Friday’s ceremony was held, before mistaking the Italian actor Matilda De Angelis for Mariah Carey. When International Olympic Committee President Kirsty Coventry walked into the stadium with Italian President Sergio Matarella, Petrecca announced “Matarella … and his daughter.” He also risked upsetting foreign viewers with observations including how the Spanish athletes were “always very hot,” and how “naturally” many of the Chinese team members “have phones in their hands.”
The organisation representing RAI journalists internally, the CDR, said in a statement, on Monday, the broadcaster’s sports journalists would stage protests, including withholding their bylines from their coverage of the Games and striking for three days when the event is over, in response to the sports director’s “disastrous coverage” of the opening ceremony.
The CDR, supported by the RAI journalists’ union Usigrai, said the flawed commentary was damaging to RAI, its licence fee payers and to journalists who work for the public service: “This is not a political issue, as some would have us believe, but a question of respect and dignity for public service.”
Opposition politicians in Italy picked up on the gaffes as a sign of the politicization of appointments at RAI in recent years. Petrecca, formerly the head of RaiNews, had been accused of bias toward Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni. Italian MEP Sandro Ruotolo (PD) said it represented a further sign of “political occupation and amateurism” at what he called “TeleMeloni”.
“These lamentable incidents, which tarnish the image of Italy’s public broadcasting service, show just how urgent it is in Italy to implement the European Media Freedom Act without delay, including by activating the mechanisms for lodging complaints with the Italian courts and the European regulator, the European Board for Media Services,” insisted EFJ President Maja Sever. “The EFJ stands firmly with its Italian affiliate, the FNSI, and the trade union Usigrai, as well as with all RAI journalists who today went on a massive signing strike. We fully understand their concern not to be assimilated to a politicised and incompetent management”.
Source: EFJ
