Information outlets focus on the cable car massacre. Report of the Eurispes – CoRiS Sapienza Tv News Observatory
In the foreground the cable car massacre. Migrants: children shipwrecked. Tg3: let’s not get used to these tragedies. Tg La7 attacks president Lukashenko. Commotion for the farewell to Carla Fracci.
Tv News from 24 to 28 May – The massacre of the Mottarone cable car, which took 14 victims, imposes itself in the prime time editions collecting, between Monday and Friday, 20 openings. As has not happened for months, this tragic event has monopolised mainstream news, with a single headline on Monday for Tg4 and Tg5 and openings for the other newspapers, which even dedicated half of the edition to it. On Wednesday, when developments in the investigation brought to light the hypothesis of solemn responsibility involving the plant’s staff. Disconcertment for all, with Tg5, that on Friday includes a harsh editorial by Pier Luigi Battista.
This event profoundly shakes the country and registers a greater impact also because of the continuous improvement of the pandemic scenario, to which just three openings in the week go. Elements of the ‘TV of pain’ also re-emerge in the reports. In expressing participation in the tragedy, newspapers have often presented the victims with an excessive level of familiarity, drawing on their social accounts to offer their audience personal faces and moments. The only survivor, a 5-year-old boy, named Eitan (21 references in the headlines), was also given excessive attention, with some reports going so far as to “recite” his requests and suffering after his traumatic awakening.
On Tuesday, the RAI news channels chose to open on the subject of migrants, with Draghi lashing out at Europe for having left the country on its own for too long. Tg3 took a strong stance, with the first headline featuring a harsh statement by the writer Maria Grazia Calandrone who, faced with further harrowing images – those of the bodies of migrant children returned from the sea on Libyan beaches – urged us “not to get used to it” and to work to ensure that these tragedies can come to an end. There was limited interest in the Mediaset networks, with Tg5 dedicating a single headline to the arrest of boss Rocco Morabito, illustrating how, over the years, the ‘Ndrangheta has grown and become hegemonic worldwide.
This week, there is limited space for politics, which is resolved in the debate on the announcements for the restart and in the dialectic between trade unions and Confindustria (Italian Industrial Federation). Great interest for Tg4 and Tg La7 (from different perspectives) in the “guarantor turn” of the 5 Star Movement, announced by the former leader Luigi Di Maio, who publicly apologised to the former Mayor of Lodi, Simone Uggetti – guest on Friday of News Mediaset, acquitted on appeal of charges of bid-rigging -, acknowledging having contributed, in 2016 (together with the League, as highlighted by Mentana), to an absolute media pillory against the PD exponent.
As for foreign affairs, the hijacking of a Ryanair flight from Athens to Vilnius over the skies of Belarus on Monday attracts the interest of RAI news, but it is only Tg La7 that returns to it during all the editions of the week following the developments of this tragic event – aimed at kidnapping the opposing journalist Roman Protasevič – in an increasingly “Cold War” climate. Attention in the reports for all to the European Commission’s sanctions against Minsk, which will take refuge in Soci at Putin’s court on Friday. Also on Friday’s news, Mediaset’s in-depth reportage from the Gaza Strip – headlined by Studio Aperto – where, amidst the rubble of destroyed buildings, the accounts of witnesses alternate, with the awareness that in these years “generations of children who will hate each other are growing up”.
The committal for trial of the Egyptian agents accused of murdering the young man in the Regeni case received headlines on Tuesday for Tg La7 and Tg2 and reports for Tg Rai.
The death of Carla Fracci, dancer and star of La Scala theatre and a worldwide symbol of Italian dance, generated great commotion and, on Thursday, was featured at the opening of Tg1, Tg2, Tg5 and Studio Aperto, with a double headline for RAI news, echoing President Mattarella’s words: “With her elegance and artistic commitment, she honoured the country”.