Article: Televised murder revelation shocks Italy

The shocking climax of a murder investigation during a live broadcast left Italians on Friday questioning the role of television in a country governed by media mogul Silvio Berlusconi.

There were angry reactions after 3.5 million people saw the mother of missing schoolgirl Sarah Scazzi being told on live television this week that her brother-in-law was being charged with the teenager's murder.

"This is the last frontier of a culture that... has long given the media the right and the duty to probe everything, to enter everywhere and monitor our existence until the moment we expire," Il Giornale daily said in an editorial.

As a video clip of the revelation made its rounds of the Internet after a two-month search for the 15-year-old that has dominated television news, viewers posted messages on blogs professing "profound shame."

Commentators railed at the "amoral apathy" of such an "exhibitionist society."

The mother, Concetta, was taking part in "Chi l'ha visto?," a programme that investigates disappearances, when she was told for the first time that police were now searching for the body of her daughter, missing since August.

The stunned woman sat in paralysed silence for 11 minutes while the programme's presenter read out reports from news agencies as they came in that pointed to the girl's uncle as the probable killer.

The show saw a huge boost in ratings of up to 40 percent following the revelation, with the number of viewers rising to five million people.

Catholic newspaper Avvenire said the show "marked a truly dark moment for conscience and mercy."

It said the family's privacy had been betrayed for a "'reality' offered as food for morbid curiosity."

Wednesday's live murder revelation was only the latest in a long line of televised twists and turns of the search for the missing girl in an impoverished farming village in southeast Italy.

Members of Scazzi's extended family appeared on an almost daily basis on daytime television, commenting on the latest leads in the inquiry and responding to the wildest rumours.

The alleged murderer himself, Michele Misseri, who lived in the same village as Scazzi, gave numerous interviews on television before his arrest to the dozens of journalists who have descended on the area in the past two months.

"We are all victims of the same machine. The machine of pain, which feeds on human stories," La Stampa daily said in an editorial.

The mother in this case was "the true meat of the television slaughterhouse," it added.

Il Sole 24 Ore said: "Tragedies should be respected, not put on stage. It's not moralism, it's conscious use of the medium at our disposition."

Berlusconi's media empire has been widely blamed for the popularity of trashy television programmes and reality shows since the 1990s.

But some commenters said it was Italians' own fault for watching the stuff.

La Stampa commented: "They were so busy being indignant that they forgot to do the one thing that could have changed a system based on the lazy consensus of the population: switch off the television."
 
That's nothing compared to the Canal Livre / Wallace Souza scandal in Brazil

Broadcasting career
He began presenting Canal Livre in 1989.[4] The program which was described as "investigative journalism aimed at fighting crime and social injustice,"[5] ran until late 2008.[4] The program, which drew a large audience, showed police raids and arrests, with presenters often following police chases in a helicopter.[7] It was one of the most popular shows in Manaus.[4]
Criminal accusations

In 2009, Souza attracted international media attention when he was accused of hiring hitmen to kill five people to increase the ratings of his program.[2][8] Suspicions were raised because he was frequently first to the scene of a crime, gathering graphic footage of the victims.[9] A former police officer, Moacir Jorge da Costa, claimed he carried out one of the murders.[7] Souza and his legal team denied Souza's involvement with the murders.[8] Souza's son, Raphael, was arrested and is currently in prison facing charges of homicide, drug trafficking and illegal gun possession.[4]
Weapons, ammunition and cash were discovered at Souza's home when the police conducted a search.[4][8]
In October 2009, he was presented with charges of murder, drug-trafficking, intimidation of witnesses, illegal carrying of arms and formation of a criminal gang.[10] He was also expelled from the state assembly.[6] After an arrest warrant was issued, Souza disappeared and 60[11] civil and federal[12] police began to search for him.[1] Road blocks were mounted to try to stop him from leaving Manaus.[10] He subsequently gave himself up to police on October 9, 2009.[13] He repeatedly proclaimed his innocence.[14] His brother, vice-mayor Carlos Souza, requested that when sent to prison he have his own cell and be separated from fellow inmates.[12] Vanessa Lima, the former producer of the program, was arrested in December 2009.[15]
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