Rai round-up

On Saturday, Tommaso Padoa-Schioppa, Finance Minister, writes to Rai saying that he no longer has confidence in Angelo Maria Petroni, the Finance Ministry's representative on the Rai board. Petroni was nominated by Padoa-Schioppa's right-wing predecessor. Petroni claims that the move is purely political, and has no legal foundation. Petroni is partly right: the move has no basis in the Gasparri law, which currently governs the broadcaster. However, according to Repubblica,

"il ministro dell'Economia può revocare la fiducia ad un proprio rappresentante rifacendosi al principio più generale del "contrarius actus". Ovvero, così come autonomamente il fiduciario è stato nominato, altrettanto autonomamente può essere revocato se non esiste una normativa specifica".

The decision will be referred to a shareholders' meeting in June.

Yesterday, Mediaset, along with other European partners, buys a majority stake in Dutch production company Endemol. Mediaset will, through Endemol, now supply programmes to its competitor, Rai, in prime-time. An overwhelming majority (93%) of respondents in a Repubblica insta-poll believe that Mediaset will use their control to screw Rai over.

Today, the centre-right members of the Rai board, upset about Petroni, threaten to vote no-confidence in the director-general Claudio Cappon. As far as I can see, this procedure is not found in the legislation or statuto sociale of Rai.

Conclusion? In both cases, the centre-left and centre-right are making up the law as they go along.

Worst. Minister. Ever

One can tell something about Italian journalism by the way in which Italian newspapers and television news bulletins treat editorials from the Financial Times and the Economist, two papers with deserved reputations for straight-talking. Yet when these editorials reach Italy, they quickly become sensationalized. And so, when the Financial Times published on its website a ranking of Eurozone finance ministers, putting Tomasso Padoa Schioppa at the bottom of the list, it quickly made the headlines and led to a ridiculous poll on TgLa7 ("Padoa-Schioppa is the worst member of the government: yes or no?").

Like many of these rankings, the devil is in the details - more specifically, in who is polled. In the case of the FT's three-star ranking of finance ministers, it seems to have been a quick series of phone calls around the office ("Each finance minister has also been ranked out of three by FT correspondents according to their political effectiveness"). The dangers of group-think are considerable. In sum, a pleasant game, but the FT's considered judgement - "has upset business and resorted to budget tricks but will probably succeed in cutting the deficit" - doesn't tell us much we didn't know before.