Telecom Serbia: What’s that? (And where is NPR’s
Sylvia Poggioli?) (September 2003)
The last news I heard on NPR before getting on the plane to come back
to Italy was a very rare report from Italy. I thought it was going
to be about the Telecom Serbia affair since that’s the scandal that’s been
sizzling in Italy all summer. However, I was wrong. I have no
idea why her colleagues in Washington consider Sylvia Poggioli, NPR’s correspondent
in Rome, “inestimable”. For years she’s been offering no more than
a banal folkloristic vision of the Bel Paese: pizza, pasta, the Padrino (Mafia
godfather), and the Pope. If for no better reason than love of alliteration,
she could have added politics, but she preferred to speak of soccer instead.
So Sylvia spoke of Silvio’s (Berlusconi) vacation, not to recount of his
encounters with Russian President Putin in Sardinia, but rather to explain
the Italian premier’s departure from the Emerald Coast to Rome to discuss
Italy’s soccer turmoils.
She didn’t deem it necessary to tell her American listeners how the former
Italian prime minister and current president of the European Union commission
(Romano Prodi), the former foreign minister (Lamberto Dini) and his assistant
(Piero Fassino), and the former minister of the treasury and present President
of the Republic (Carlo Azeglio Ciampi) can’t possibly “not have known” about
the Telecom Serbia deal. She preferred to tell her listeners about
the same amount in losses suffered by Italy’s first division soccer teams.
She didn’t communicate to her listeners the doubt that $500 million of the
money may have ended up in the pockets of those ex-governors of Italy in
the form of pay-offs. She thought it more important for Americans to
know that the same sum of money is the amount that the professional soccer
teams owe in back taxes and in social security contributions. She didn’t
think it was necessary to inform her listeners that these rulers couldn’t
possibly “not have known” and if indeed they “didn’t know” it would have
been a clamorous case of incompetence.
The fact that these men had poorly spent the money of the Italian taxpayers
in dubious deals and that they may even have become rich in the process isn’t
the only information she didn’t seem to consider worthy of mention.
She also neglected to inform NPR’s audience of the political significance
of the affair since the money was used to finance a dictator who was considered
an enemy to the West, Slobodon Milosevic.
Poggioli makes no effort to be an exception to the overwhelming majority
of American journalists who allow themselves to be wined, dined and romanced
in the Italian capital in order to better prepare themselves to accept the
gospel according to the ex, post, refound, but more importantly “still” communists
whose reason for being is to demonize the prime minister chosen by the majority
of the Italian electorate.
The other day in an interview with La Stampa’s Maurizio Molinari, the former
under Secretary of State, James Rubin, was asked, “What do you think of the
Telecom Serbia affair?” Rubin answered, “I don’t know the details,
nor the involvement of the Italian government.”
And Rubin is a man who reads the papers! If he has heard nothing of
the affair, it’s because American journalists like Sylvia and Co., are obviously
promoting the interests of someone and something that are neither those of
their readers and listeners, nor that of information.
Sandra Giovanna Giacomazzi writes for the Roman daily, L'Opinione della Libertà.
She was awarded the Mario Soldati Prize for Journalism and Criticism for
2002. She also teaches law and economics in Turin, Italy.
giogia@giogia.com Return to List Return to home page