TV personality row eclipses paedophile pornography

Last Sunday the director of news on Italian state broadcaster RAI 1 slotted himself in for an appearance on the main evening …

Last Sunday the director of news on Italian state broadcaster RAI 1 slotted himself in for an appearance on the main evening bulletin. Mr Gad Lerner wished to inform the nation that he had resigned.

Were the motives for his resignation not distinctly serious, one might be amused by this latter-day tele-visual opera buffa. One might be entitled to wonder if Italians really care about the identity of the person who runs the news operation on the state broadcaster's first channel.

Gad Lerner's resignation, however, is not remotely funny. He resigned because he had been caught up in a major political row prompted by the fact that his channel (as well as RAI's channel 3) had last week broadcast disturbing images of paedophile pornography.

The controversial images had been broadcast within the ambit of a report on an investigation by state prosecutors in Torre Annunziata, near Naples, which uncovered an Italo-Russian racket that produced and sold child pornography on the Internet.

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The images in question were deeply disturbing since, among other things, they showed the apparent rape of a young boy by an adult man. Clearly, this was hardly family viewing for the main evening news bulletin on the nation's longest-established television service, a bulletin that last Wednesday night was watched by seven million people. Within minutes, the RAI switchboard was receiving hundreds of protest calls.

In the ensuing row, the Communications Minister, Salvatore Cardinale, called it a "grave" incident. The Justice Minister, Pietro Fassino, initiated one of four investigations by asking the Torre Annunziata prosecutors if they had supplied the material in question to RAI 1.

Italy's lower house, the Chamber of Deputies, suspended business to hold a special debate. It soon turned ugly, with the centre-right opposition accusing the centre-left government of mismanaging public television. President Azeglio Ciampi called for the protection of young people from "damaging images".

Mr Lerner and his opposite number at RAI 3, Nino Rizzo Nervo, as well as three journalists involved in the preparation of the report, all offered their resignations, which were promptly rejected by the RAI board.

Even though the images broadcast apparently had nothing to do with the inquiry and even though Gad Lerner publicly assumed responsibility for what he called "the incredible chain of missed checks on the footage" that led to their being broadcast, he continued to be hounded by the centre-right, which called for his resignation.

Given Mr Lerner's swashbuckling, campaigning style of journalism on previous news and current affairs programmes, it was hardly surprising to discover that he had made enemies. Nor did it help his popularity on the right that he is a former member of the extreme left-wing group, Lotta Continua.

In the end, Mr Lerner took to the airwaves on Sunday night and resigned, but not without using his resignation "speech" to launch a broadside against those who had called for his head. He recalled how, on the day of his appointment just three months ago, he had had a meeting with Mario Landolfi, of ex-fascist Alleanza Nazionale, the president of the parliamentary commission that oversees RAI.

Mr Lerner alleged that, as their meeting was coming to an end, Mr Landolfi had pulled an envelope out of his pocket and said: "Could you find a job for this person for me, if at all possible?"

What has been most shocking throughout the last week of TV-related polemics is that sight has been lost, at least partially, of the disturbing implications of the Torre Annunziata investigation. Eight Italians and three Russians have been arrested at the end of a 19-month inquiry which put 1,690 people under investigation and used a decoy website to attract potential "customers".

A special police unit was able to infiltrate a paedophile network, intercepting packages of pornographic material arriving by mail and then having them delivered by undercover policemen, dressed as postmen and carrying hidden cameras.

Thousands of tapes and digital disks, seized during raids on 600 homes, included scenes in which minors - possibly orphans or kidnap victims, some aged only two - were raped. One videotape, costing £4, appears to have been a "snuff movie", showing the killing of a child.

Little wonder that the chief prosecutor in the Torre Annunziata investigation expressed his disappointment, saying: "I expected that this inquiry would prompt a social, moral and indeed political reaction against paedophilia. I expected politicians to help us find out who it is who is kidnapping, raping and, as far as we know, even killing children. I expected collaboration and help. Instead, all we got was just a sterile polemic."