Media executives are promising to help after a top Church leader complained
about the quality of some Italian television programs.
Cardinal Camillo Ruini, president of the Italian bishops' conference, appealed
for improvements in TV fare, and his plea prompted an immediate response from
public- and private-TV officials.
In his address Monday to the episcopate's Permanent Council, the cardinal
explained that to "improve the quality of what television offers"
means "to give more time to positive life testimonies and experiences,
avoiding that debasement which concentrates on sex, violence and bloody
incidents and, more generally, on that ephemeral culture so frequently seen
today."
The presidents of the principal networks, the state-run RAI and the private
Mediaset (founded by Silvio Berlusconi, the current Prime Minister), replied to
the cardinal today in the pages of the newspaper Avvenire.
Antonio Baldassare, president of RAI, said that a two-tier review of
public-network programming will soon be in place, "one external [to RAI]
and another internal, to guarantee the protection of children and the
quality."
Noting that existing codes of this nature have not been observed, the RAI
president also suggested that a panel be established with concrete powers to
control and sanction, as is already the case for advertising.
For his part, Fedele Confalonieri, president of Mediaset, said he shared the
cardinal's concern, and promised to do everything possible to respond to his
appeal.
"We already have an internal self-regulating code, which intervenes more
often than it seems," Confalonieri said. "Mediaset has rejected
several advertising campaigns because it regarded the message being transmitted
as harmful, especially for minors."
He added: "Not only was it violent advertising. It was advertising with an
ambiguous meaning. I think we did a job of prevention, invisible and more useful
than censure."
Confalonieri, however, tried to shift some of the responsibility onto families.
"If children are watching television at night, Mediaset and RAI cannot be
blamed," he said. "Television must not make families
irresponsible."