Around the Poggi crime, and the second investigation in Brescia which hypothesizes the corruption of the robes, a story was born in which the Internet bypassed TV in a collective hunt for a truth that the “system” did not find
Because Garlasco is not important so much for its narrative plots, but for the fact that it is the alleged corruption itself that has rewritten history several times with different scripts. This is why I found the long article by. inappropriate Cesare Giuzzi published Sunday 12 October on Corriere della Sera. Garlasco’s murder is ironically presented as a soap opera that continually changes the plot, as if the author did not realize that the meaning of the judicial case is not so much and only in the soap opera itself, but in the suspected corruption that would have deliberately altered the plot for purposes of private interest.
The mainstream press describes the finger and does not see the moon that that finger points to: Garlasco is on its way to becoming a new Clean Hands, ready to explode no longer in politics but, this time, in the judiciary. And if with Tangentopoli it was television that attracted the public’s attention, today the Internet is the media space that acts as the theater for the new event. The Internet has put Garlasco center stage. At the same time, however, Garlasco carried out a fundamental operation on the Internet, giving rise to a real media revolution.
The new audience
I have been frequenting the Internet for some time because, as those who deal with TV know, the audience survey conducted by qualified structures such as Auditel has also moved on to integrate consumption on platforms such as smartphones, tablets and PCs. But it is always a question of TV audiences enjoyed on other devices. By consulting YouTube instead, a curious media person could not miss the revolution underway with the reopening of the investigation into the Garlasco crime. The pandemic and the need to counter the official truth with incontrovertible scientific truth meant that new Internet newspapers were born, often more serious than the mainstream press, which gave voice to certified scientific excellence, as an alternative to voices lacking credibility, but made credible by the simple reason of having access to the only media with social credibility: TV and the press. These newspapers have created an alternative that is often more credible than the official version for analyzing reality. The alternative newspapers themselves have recognizable common traits. Unlike TV talk shows, in which the truth appears as a search achieved through opposing opinions and in which attention is supported by the conflict of the parties, classic information formats on the Internet are built on respect for individual opinions. The speakers do not fight each other, but alternate as within a simple conference opposed to or confirmed by a parallel conference.
Political tribune
The result is more similar to the “Political Tribune” of public service pedagogical TV than to today’s talk show, born in the years in which TV became the large public square in which it was possible to debate according to the rules of original direct democracy. The history of TV is complex because it involves an educational message to convey to the public. Only later, with the expansion of the audience, does it become “neotelevision”, built by integration with the public who becomes an active part in the contents. But only later, after Mani Pulite and with the transition from entertainment TV to the search for truth-TV on talk shows, did television take on a new function as a shared space in which political truth is debated.
Today the political truth of Mani Pulite appears questionable but, at a media level, the sense of television as a public space remains significant. Something similar is happening on the Internet. The best-known newspapers pursue their search for a “political” truth which, however, is always one-sided, or rather, is based on an authority in which the public can only act as spectators. In this context, the Garlasco event opens up new perspectives and seems to replicate the phenomenon of the first television media agora. Television has long lost the ability to involve its audience in the search for a truth that transcends gossip. Conversely, the reopening of the Garlasco investigation seems to be succeeding, recreating a media community, an agora that does not concern TV, but precisely the Internet.
This is a contradictory phenomenon because if generalist television as a medium contains in the word “generalist” the idea of a broad and articulated audience, computers and devices presuppose individual or at least “long tail” consumption, that is, spread over time and space. Generalist TV must maximize its audience immediately. The Internet guarantees the achievement of considerable discounts over time and space through the use of different devices. Given the nature of the Internet, it seems impossible to create an interaction, a collaboration, a collective research space, yet Garlasco seems to have achieved the miracle of a daily collective search in the direction of a truth that is no longer political, but judicial. It is a phenomenon that cannot be missed because YouTubers themselves underline it on a daily basis.
Beyond the “testimonial”
First of all, an interest was created not linked to the individual testimonial, but to the topic. Tucker Carlson demonstrated that a strong testimonial can attract millions of contacts, regardless of a supporting television network. Garlasco testifies that YouTube can overall reach a higher audience than the television audience, adding, on the basis of simple content, a more well-known audience with an anonymous audience generated by the phenomenon itself, such as a “Garlasco channel”. The new phenomenon is the choral search for truth. Online comments are no longer marginal, but an integral part of the investigation. An investigation carried out by the prosecutors of Pavia and Brescia in the utmost confidentiality, but at the same time amplified, multiplied, analyzed by an ever-growing public that claims truth and the principle of non-contradiction. Generalist TV emerges with broken bones. The majority of newspapers have replicated the pandemic script of absolute obedience to power: “Everything will be fine”, “The pronouncements of the American judicial authority are not questionable”. It didn’t work. Blind trust in the infallibility of power is dead.
Today TV programs, if they want to gather audiences, must agree with the YouTubers’ investigation, make it their own, accept a truth from below. This is an event. We are witnessing a collective participation that no longer has politics at its centre, but justice. I think that the spirit of the times has erased the dimension whereby, according to the Aristotelian definition, “man is a political animal”. Today “political” is synonymous with malfeasance and the truth seems not to concern the protection of society, but of the individual. The individual psychological dimension replaces politics as a common good.
People like us
In the face of Garlasco’s murder, two elements occupy the collective imagination. On the one hand, the horrible end of a young woman who, like Chiara Poggiimpersonates the girl next door. On the other hand, the condemnation of the poor person without evidence Alberto Stasi: he is also one of us. The search for justice is perceived on a social level as a stronger motive than the political one. Politics seems like an abstract value, but each of us could have had the fate of Chiara and Alberto. In an era of abstentionism, the majority refuses to vote but claims its right to control the work of the prosecutor’s offices. Citizens pay taxes to obtain concrete services. Even the minimal state requires at least the safety of its citizens. And when judges seem to be bought we can be victims like Chiara Poggi. Everyone can be a victim, in a different way, like Alberto Stasi. We have the right to supervise judges.
The corruption factor
But why Garlasco instead Yara GambirasioCogne or the monster of Florence? The answer lies in the Pavia prosecutor’s office and in the investigations of Fabius Napoleonperceived on the Internet as the new hero capable of cleaning up the judiciary. The reopening of the investigation into Garlasco takes place, chronologically, after the two investigations called Clean 1 and Clean 2 which have already established, on a civil level, corruption in Pavia. Garlasco is nothing more than the derivation of a crime that involved the criminal and civil judiciary and involved widespread corruption with affordable rates. When the investigation into the former prosecutor emerged Sold youthe lawyer Lovati he commented that to bribe a magistrate, who according to his opinion earns 25,000 euros a month, 20,000 or 30,000 euros would be an incongruous figure. Ten times as much, however, would be understandable. The truth is bleak: 20-30,000 euros, which still represent a more than considerable amount for a family today, are an average rate accessible to planned corruption which, precisely because it is systemic, could not foresee inaccessible disbursements if it wanted to become normal and systemised. Clean 1 and Clean 2, partly involving the same protagonists of the Garlasco investigation, are the picture of daily and generalized corruption without the evidence of which Garlasco would be incomprehensible. So the two civil investigations made the criminal investigation understandable. But without a criminal investigation, Clean 1 and 2 would have received no attention.
“Crime” in itself is a powerful engine for attracting the attention of public opinion. Crime is in itself a synonym of history: disruption of balance, exceptional events, breaking of the law and normality. But Garlasco is more than a crime: there is not just one crime. There are various interpretations: from hypotheses of forbidden provincial love, to pedophilia, up to conjectures on Freemasonry and Satanism. The entire repertoire of the most “borderline” narrative is present, combined with the banality of evil, bribes, the usual corruption of institutions. A subject so strong as to promote a media revolution and make YouTube the new agora of Italians.
