Italians are paying for manipulated television

The Italian public broadcaster (RAI), which should serve as a neutral, impartial guarantor of the people’s right to information, has been hijacked by political interest, transforming itself into a megaphone often nicknamed “Telemeloni“.

Founded in 1924, Radiotelevisione italiana is the country’s largest television provider with an audience share of over 35-42%. It operates 13+ TV channels, radio, and digital services. Yet, every citizen has to pay a 90-euro annual fee (the Canone RAI) for a service that currently prioritizes the government’s narrative. While legally framed as a tax on television ownership, it has increasingly become a forced contribution to state-sponsored propaganda.

Screenshot of the several RAI’s News Channels on the platform RaiPlay (Source: Anna Dal Bo’s Screeenshot)

The reasons for this decline are not merely “editorial choices”, they are institutional. Since early 2025, the Parliamentary Oversight Commission, chaired by Senator Barbara Floridia, has been paralyzed. This is no bureaucratic accident, but a calculated political hit. The parliamentary majority is intentionally skipping sessions to prevent a legal quorum, effectively killing the only body that can hold RAI accountable.

This blackmail is happening because the opposition refuses to vote for Simona Agnes as the new RAI President, considering her support towards the right wing party Fratelli d’Italia, whose president is the current Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni. Since the government lacks the necessary two-thirds majority for her appointment, they have chosen to break the system entirely rather than compromise. For over a year, RAI has operated in an institutional vacuum, answering to no one but the Prime Minister’s office.

The consequences of this vacuum are already poisoning our democracy. On January 10, 2026, the Usigrai Executive Committee issued a chilling warning: without parliamentary oversight, the fundamental duties of public service are dead. We see this in the always deeper “cleansing” of programs and the selection of hosts based on political loyalty rather than journalistic merit.

[Rai cannot do without oversight. Without the Parliamentary Oversight Committee, which has been blocked for over a year, Rai today is not fulfilling its role as a public service provider. Even in the management of trade union relations, the company arbitrarily uses accreditation powers that the rules do not grant it, and yet nothing happens, partly because no body exercises the supervisory functions that the law assigns to Parliament. Usigrai expresses its strong concerns to you, the citizens, and to social forces, also in relation to the management of information in view of the upcoming constitutional referendum on justice.]
(Source: Anna Dal Bo’s Screenshot)

The most dangerous example, however, lies just ahead, with the constitutional referendum on justice (happening on March 22^nd and 23^rd). This vote concerns the “separation of careers“, a radical shift that would legally decouple judges from prosecutors. It is a dense, technical, and high-stakes issue that requires a balanced national debate. Instead, Italians will face a media machine that has silenced dissent. Without a functioning Oversight Commission, there is no one to ensure that the “No” campaign gets the same airtime as the government-preferred “Yes”.

Furthermore, as Senator Floridia herself explains, while real citizens distance themselves from a toxic political climate, the digital debate is flooded by organized groups that pollute comment sections and manufacture a false sense of consensus. We are witnessing the death of genuine public opinion, replaced by a “follow the herd” mentality curated by those in power. We must stop treating this as a minor political issue. It is a democratic emergency.

The minority cannot give in to this blackmail, as it would mean accepting a Commission that serves the government rather than the citizens. We pay for RAI because it is supposed to belong to us, but when we allow it to be manipulated, we are then financing our own blindness. The future of Italian journalism must be neutral, independent, and fiercely protective of the truth.

The call to action is simple: do not stay silent and demand democracy. If we don’t reclaim our public broadcaster now, we aren’t just losing a TV channel, we are losing our right to a fair and informed society. It’s time to remind the government that while they may hold the screen, us citizens still own the remote, and have the power to shut injustice up.