Veteran left-leaning Italian journalist, writer and TV host Corrado Augias has become the latest leading cultural figure to leave State broadcaster Rai after the installation of management picked by Italy's rightwing government.
Rome-born Augias, 88, a past presenter of popular book and culture shows on Rai, is moving to La7, Italy's seventh TV channel after the three Rai ones and the three Berlusconi ones.
"No one kicked me out but no one tried to keep me, at 88 years of age I have to work in places and with people I like, and I don't like this Rai," he told Corriere della Sera.
"They wanted to demolish the Rai of the Communists; but they're simply demolishing Rai," he said.
Augias will host a weekly cultural talk show, La Torre di Babele (The Tower of Babel), showing after a popular political chat show hosted by an ex-Rai presenter, Lilly Gruber, who left the State-run network for publisher and Torino boss Umberto Cairo's La7 some years ago.
Others who have left Rai since the new government appointments include journalists Massimo Gramellini, Lucia Annunziata and Bianca Berlinguer, host Fabio Fazio and anti-mafia writer Roberto Saviano.
Rai management regularly changes with changes of government.
Augias, a former MEP for the now-defunct Left Democrat Party, became popular in Italy as host of several shows dealing with mysteries and past criminal and cultural cases, such as Telefono giallo and Enigma. His latest show was Quante storie, aired by Rai 3.
Perhaps his most successful show was a book programme called Babele, aimed primarily at young people.
As writer, Augias issued a series of crime novels set in the early 20th century and others. His other works include several essays about peculiar features of the world's most important cities: I segreti di ("The Secrets of...") Rome, Paris, New York City and London.
In 2006, in collaboration with scholar Mauro Pesce, he published a work dealing with the gospel's description of the life of Jesus (Inchiesta su Gesù), which became a bestseller in Italy.
As a journalist, Augias has worked for left-leaning daily and weekly publications La Repubblica and L'Espresso, among others.
He has also been a playwright.
In December 2020, he handed back his French Legion of Honour, after the decoration was awarded to Egyptian president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, in a protest over a lack of cooperation in the Cairo torture and murder of Italian student Giulio Regeni, allegedly by four Egyptian intelligence officers who are currently on trial in absentia in Rome.
He is an atheist.
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