A team from state broadcaster’s news service attacked in Prato

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The journalist Giulia Baldi and the video-operator Daniela Pecar were making a report on the confiscation of an illegal waste dump when they were insulted and beaten by some women.

On the morning of April 4th 2019, at the Paperino cemetery on the outskirts of Prato, some individuals attacked the journalist Giulia Baldi, editor of the Rai news programme of Tuscany, and video-operator Daniela Pecar.

The team was conducting a report on the judicial confiscation of an illegal waste dump, ordered the previous day. The journalist and the video-operator were threatened and insulted by a man and a group of women who attacked them.

One of the women, in an attempt to get hold of the microphone, twisted the journalist’s wrist and finger, and pulled her hair making her glasses and microphone fall to the ground. The same woman picked up a branch to try to hit Daniela Pecar. When the video-operator managed to inform the police who then arrived at the scene, the attackers left quickly. The journalist recorded the incident with her mobile phone and handed over the images to the Prato police, making a formal complaint.

Numerous expressions of solidarity were made to the two journalists, from RAI’s in-house union to the Interior minister Matteo Salvini.

“I felt greatly offended , nobody should be beaten up while doing his job – Baldi told Ossigeno – I was very angry and I appreciated all the expressions of solidarity that came through numerous declarations and press agency announcements: that’s important. If anyone, whoever it is, puts his hands on me, I make a formal complaint. One cannot ignore such episodes”.

According to preliminary findings, the group that attacked the team came from a Roma settlement, the Poderaccio camp in Florence. These would be people of Italian nationality, some of whom would have bought an area adjacent to the illegal waste dump.

COA (wt)