Rome: Relatives attack TV reporters whilst they film an arrest.

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Two journalists and two video operators from Piazzapulita (La7) and Nemo (Rai2) were insulted and attacked and a video camera damaged

In Rome in the Romanina neighbourhood at dawn on the 8th May whilst police were arresting four individuals from the Casamonica-DiSilvio clan linked to organised crime in Rome, two women belonging to the same clan, attacked the journalists and the video-operators who were recording the event, insulting them, gesturing in a threatening way, throwing objects and attempting to prevent the recording. Those attacked were the journalist Nello Trocchia, and cameraman Giacomo del Buono from Nemo (Rai2), the correspondent Micaela Farrocco and the cameraman Raul Garzia from Piazzapulita (La7). Nemo’s cameraman’s video-camera was damaged. There was also a cameraman from the police filming the event and he too had to interrupt recording.

The arrests were for a serious episode of intolerance which happened the month before, on Easter Sunday in the same neighbourhood in a café where an invalid and the owner of the café were beaten up and the premises seriously damaged. The incident was documented by a video (see here) which caused a major sensation. This public attention explained the presence of reporters and cameramen at the moment of the arrests of those responsible (read here).

The journalist Micaela Farrocco from Piazzapulita told Ossigeno, “What struck me most was that two individuals, the sisters of Antonio Casamonica succeeded in preventing, in a public street, us journalists and a policeman who was covering the raid with his camera, from filming freely the scene of an arrest. None of us was able to do his job well. We had to retreat; we had to switch off the video-cameras in the face of the violence and the threats from persons who confirmed yet again their domination in that neighbourhood.”

Nello Trocchia during the conference, “Anti-mafia journalism and press freedom” held in the Tapestry Room of Rai in viale Mazzini, described along the same lines, the episode and added, “It is unacceptable that in Italy there are zones where this can happen.”

The video of the attack on the two teams was broadcast on the 10th May during an episode of Piazzapulita (see here) and on the 11th May in the programme of Nemo (see here). Both Trocchia and Farrocco were interviewed by the police to reconstruct what had happened.

RDM