Rai, Soldi’s thrust: “All the new appointments for the management of the newspapers are male: serious tear”

The recent “all male” appointments in the Rai Tg constitute a “serious breach” of the company policy on gender equality. The debut of the sovereign leaders in the Supervisory Commission begins with a slap in the face. The one settled by the president Marinella Soldiindicated at the time by the government Dragonsto the new managing director Robert Sergio and to the general manager Giampaolo Rossi imposed by Giorgia Meloni. Sign of a tension on the upper floors of Viale Mazzini that shows no sign of abating: after having pushed for the resignation Carlo Fuortes, now the right is also aiming to get rid of the former manager of Discovery. However, a maneuver returned to the sender by the person directly concerned, who did not hesitate to report the first errors of the new management to Parliament.

After conveying to the bicameral supervisory body “a sense of urgency” for Rai’s enormous debt, “equal to 580 million euros in 2022”, which requires “the approval of a serious and credible business plan shortly, strictly no later than 2023”, Soldi went straight into the overbooking of men in leading positions: “With respect to gender equality” which is “one of the pillars on which a democratic and sustainable society is founded, a goal not yet achieved in our country” the State Television has obtained in the last two years “a significant reduction in the gender gap, both in terms of careers and wages between 2021 and 2022”. But then the right arrived and the process was reversed: “An effort – accuses the president – which unfortunately was not made on the occasion of the last appointments, in particular for the management of the all-male newspapers: a serious tear to corporate gender policies, ratified by the Board of Directors a year ago”. And it is not the first call on gender equality launched by the president (Dragiana) Money: “I hope that in the appointments that will be made, the gender equality policy will be applied both in the company and on the screen”, he said from the Turin Book Fair. To then vote against the package on the newspapers in the Rai board of directors.

Now the new hit. With CEO Sergio who doesn’t fit though. Gender equality, he defends, “is a particularly sensitive issue for Rai, as a company but even more as a public service of general interest; it is for president Soldi and it is for me – he remarked during his hearing before to the Supervisory Commission – The activities carried out in this direction, first of all the on and off screen policies approved for the first time by this Board of Directors, have been widely echoed, most recently in the 2022 Sustainability Report. What matters is the trend and the pace to reduce the gap – underlines Sergio – significant progress has been made on both fronts and I can already reassure you that further progress will be made in the appointments that will soon complete the top management team, both in the editorial and staff”. “Even those programs that some feared might suffer some ostracism have been confirmed, demonstrating that the approach that moves us is anything but ideological”, continues the Rai CEO. The reference is to the announcement of “a professional of the caliber of Lucia Announced sorry he wanted to deprive the citizen users, who are our shareholders of last resort, of his point of view. Had it been necessary, but it was not, we would have defended the space of him. ” And on the farewell of Fabio Fazio? “You had decided before I took office to try your hand elsewhere”, explains Sergio.

Appointments, farewells and a canon that “remains a central theme”. CEO Roberto Sergio repeats, in Vigilance: “It is the lowest among the main European countries. If – even in the absence of binding and unavoidable Community provisions – one intends to proceed with a revision of the collection system, it will be essential to evaluate the effectiveness of the alternative solution and the related risks, identifying the mitigation measures.The country – he continues – cannot risk regression by resorting to methods that can be characterized, like the previous one, by tax evasion of 30%, with all the consequences on continuity corporate”.