Word: rai
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...left-wing commentator's show was canceled after Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi accused him and two other presenters of making "criminal use" of RAI, the biggest public television network in Italy. Santoro waged a long court battle against the broadcaster and prevailed, going back on the air in 2006. Earlier this month, however, RAI suspended all of its political talk programming until regional elections are held on March 28, citing a need to maintain its political balance. This time, Santoro decided that his show, Annozero, would go on. He filmed a live version of his program Thursday that was streamed...
...Santoro is hardly an outsider in an industry where press and politics often walk hand in hand. He first started working at RAI in 1982, and when his show went off the air, he served briefly as a European Parliament member, representing Italy's center-left political coalition. But supporters are hoping his efforts will be the first chink in what has been a tightly controlled media market. "It's still early days," says journalist Marco Travaglio, a regular guest on the show. "But we're going to try. If it works, it could set a precedent...
...less written for the general public than for politicians and other insiders. But most striking is Berlusconi's domination of the airwaves. In a country where 80% of people get their news from television, he owns the three biggest commercial stations and maintains influence over the three public channels (RAI among them), whose governing boards are appointed by the state. Last week, Italian newspapers published transcripts of wiretaps in which Berlusconi could apparently be heard berating Giancarlo Innocenzi, the head of the independent broadcast regulator, to shut down Annozero. During a November broadcast dealing with alleged mafia ties in Berlusconi...
...undermine his control. On Feb. 25, an Italian court dismissed the case against a lawyer who had been found guilty of taking bribes from Berlusconi. The court made no ruling on the evidence - it simply closed the case because the 10-year statute of limitations had expired. But when RAI's flagship channel reported the news during its lunchtime broadcast, the presenter announced that the lawyer had been "acquitted" of the charges. Until recently, the comment would have gone unchallenged. This time, however, the clip went viral on Facebook. A group set up to protest the broadcast quickly grew...
...comes the turn of Thailand's Uruphong Raksasad. Applying the principles of reality TV to his homemade production, Uruphong engaged two scuffling farming families to work a plot of land he rented for them in his native Chiang Rai province, and filmed them. The end result - the ironically entitled Agrarian Utopia - is a poignant essay on lives of mounting debt and bug-catching subsistence, evoking eternal cycles of suffering that will seem stunningly fresh to urban audiences in Thailand and the region. See what we learned from a decade at the movies...