The mud-slinging machine

The following are extracts taken from Roberto Saviano’s introductory monologue on Rai Tre’s Vieni Via Con Me.

“For some time now, I have lived with an obsession. An obsession which concerns “the mud-slinging machine”, that mechanism which goes as far as to smear individuals. I have this obsession because I was born in a place where whoever opposed organised crime has always been subjected – even after his death, sometimes - to a process of complete delegitimization.”

“I feel that democracy is truly in danger, and this might sound exaggerated but I’d like to explain myself better... Democracy is imperilled to the extent that if you oppose certain powers, if you oppose this government, what awaits you is an attack by the mud-slinging machine. An attack that starts from your private life, small details from your private life which are used against you...”

“There is a difference between a proper enquiry and a smear-campaign... An enquiry is based on an enormous amount of information... journalists dream of having all that information at their disposal in order to give depth to their research. A smear-campaign, on the other hand, uses one single element which is used against the person it decides to smear...”

“Democracy is in danger, in the sense that when you switch on your computer and you’re about to write your article, you ask yourself ‘Will they attack me tomorrow? Will they attack me about things which have nothing to do with public life, which have nothing to do with crime?’ It’s not as if you’ve done something wrong...”

“But they will use your private life... they will force you to defend yourself... so you may decide to refrain from writing that article... If you’re a mayor, a councillor, a doctor, whoever, before criticising, you’ll think twice... And when this happens, the freedom of the press starts to deteriorate. Freedom of expression deteriorates. Of course, we’re not living in China or in a fascist dictatorship, nobody gets arrested... but they start compromising your private life. With one aim in mind: to be able to say “We are all identical”.

“The power of democracy is to be found in its variety, in its multiplicity. But the instinct which is becoming prevalent in this country is to say “We are all the same” and the mud-slinging machine emerges victorious when we start believing that. It is precisely differences which the mud-slinging machine wants to hide from the viewer, the reader, the citizen...”

“Faced with the mud-slinging machine, we shouldn’t say “We are better” but “We are different”. We should refuse to place everyone in the same pot... We should delineate the differences between us... For instance, by proclaiming that one’s private life is sacred, absolutely sacred, one of the pillars of democracy. Nobody should be prying when you tell the people you love that you love them. Gossip, which has increasingly become an instrument of power, an instrument of blackmail... one must understand that there are limits which form the basis of democracy”.

“The mud-slinging machine also tells you - and this is perhaps the most serious factor: ‘If you criticise, it’s because you want to take their place... in order to force us to think that things will always be this way, that there are no differences at all.”