Information pluralism is one of those intangible common goods that sustain democracy. When public service broadcasting fails to respect it as it should, citizens lose the opportunity to form an accurate opinion, which is essential for the functioning of a healthy democracy. But has there ever been a RAI capable of embracing the principle of information pluralism? According to Piero Badaloni, the answer is yes, it has existed, albeit with many difficulties, and the evidence can be found in his book La Rai che ho vivere (Le Piccole Pagine, 2026, €16.00, pp. 259), in which the journalist retraces his long association with public service broadcasting.
Having joined RAI in 1971 as a religious columnist, Badaloni remained there until 2011. During his four decades working for Tg1, he created in-depth programs such as Droga che fare (1982) and entertainment programs such as Uno-mattina (1986) and Piacere Raiuno (1989). He then served as a correspondent for Italian state television in Paris, Brussels, and finally Madrid. During his forty years, the popular journalist often had a front-row seat on epochal events, from the Moro kidnapping to terrorist and mafia massacres, through major scandals such as the P2 scandal, to the Mani Pulite investigations and the Italy of Prodi and Berlusconi.
Badaloni tells us how television news has portrayed an Italy marked by major fractures and dramatic events, but also undergoing rapid cultural and anthropological change. An Italy increasingly less rural and increasingly oriented toward modernity and personal fulfillment.
But the book also encompasses another story, beyond that of our country. Badaloni, a longtime lover of public television, describes RAI as a driving force of modernization and social cohesion, capable of profoundly impacting the culture and way of thinking of Italians. The flipside—and Badaloni makes no secret of it—is the great capacity for manipulation that television news has demonstrated when it has fallen into unscrupulous hands, as has happened especially over the last thirty years.
