Journalist nominated as one of Ranucci's replacements renounces post

Açıklama

(ANSA) - ROME, SEP 3 - Giulia Presutti, one of two journalists nominated to replace Sigfrido Ranucci at the helm of Rai's premier investigative journalism show Report, has announced she is renouncing the position for the good of the show. The State broadcaster said last week that it was replacing Ranucci due to his friendship with a controversial businessman who organized a bomb attack on the journalist's home last year. It said it had offered him alternative roles. Ranucci, 65, has said he is taking legal action to get his old job back and the other journalists working on Report have threatened to quit if his removal is confirmed. Presutti, 36, has worked for Report for nine years on some of its most hard-hitting probes. The other journalist Rai said would replace Ranucci was Daniele Piervincenzi, 45, a former rugby reporter who has worked on some of Rai's prickliest cases including an investigation into the links between a Roman coastal crime family and the far-right Casapound group, in which a member of the Spada family broke his nose with a headbutt. Ranucci has said he was the victim of a character assassination by the conservative press that was almost unprecedented in the world due to his relationship with businessman Valter Lavitola, a restaurateur who was once convicted of extorting late former premier Silvio Berlusconi over alleged escorts. Government politicians and conservative journalists insistently called for Rai to suspend Ranucci from Report, a hard-hitting programme whose exposés have often irked the government, over his allegedly murky friendship with Lavitola, who has confessed to last October's bombing and said he did it to boost his friend's security detail. Prosecutors have said the bombing on Ranucci's home outside Rome in October was meant to further boost Ranucci's popularity in light of a possible entry into politics from which Lavitola allegedly also hoped to benefit. They said they do not suspect Ranucci of involvement in the plan. (ANSA). Read article...

Etiketler