Launched 1989 Country Italy Headquarters Partinico | Owned by Pino Maniaci Broadcast area Palermo, Sicily | |
Slogan Una Voce dalla Sicilia ("A Voice from Sicily") | ||
Telejato is a small, local, independent television station based in the town of Partinico, in Sicily, Italy. It is widely known for its anti-Mafia reportage.
Contents
History
The station was founded in 1989 by Alberto Lo Iacono and subsequently sold to the Italian Communist Refoundation Party (Partito della Rifondazione Comunista or PRC) which, in turn, sold it, in 1999, to Pino Maniaci, a Sicilian building contractor and entrepreneur.
At the time of its purchase by Maniaci, the station was ostensibly in a state of "impending financial collapse", due to the debts incurred by its previous management. Moreover, its classification as "community television" carried an advertising limit of three minutes per hour. Maniaci's stated intention was to turn his mostly family-run Telejato into a "miniature, amateur CNN", as he called it, and, therefore, "the world’s longest TV news programme" was born, with a total of two hours of service, from 2:30 pm until 4:30pm.
Gradually, Telejato turned to investigative reportage, first turning its attention to local polluters. The station has been sued "more than 200 times" from Distilleria Bertolino alone, on account of the many reportages carried out by Telejato into alleged pollution by the distillery factory.
The Sicilian Mafia eventually became the station's main subject of reporting.
Intimidation
Telejato's owner and most of the people working there have reported receiving anonymous threats against their lives and their families' well-being, all of which, they claim, come from local Mafia bosses who are upset with the publicity caused by the station's anti-Mafia activity.
In 2007, Telejato's reporting on the unauthorised use of an extended land area by cattle barns that allegedly belonged to local, Mafia-affiliated families and had been operating there for more than twenty years, led to renewed threats. Pino's daughter, Letizia, hung placards outside the stables, reading "Stables of shame." The next day, Pino Maniaci was allegedly beaten by two unknown teenagers in the street and taken to hospital. After receiving first aid assistance, Maniaci left the hospital and, with bruises and cuts visible on his face, went on the air to denounce from Telejato, once more, the ostensibly Maffia-run cattle business. Soon after, the Italian carabinieri, in a combined anti-Mafia operation, closed down the illegal barns in the area.
In July 2008, Pino Maniaci's car, parked outside his home, was "doused with gasoline" and set on fire. This episode is part of what Maniaci claims is a constant process of threats, which manifests itself in "countless attacks", such as slashed tyres or severed brake cables in the cars he uses and even windscreens shattered by gunshots.
Maniaci was subsequently granted police protection.
The website of Telejato has often been blocked or rendered inaccessible to web search engines, allegedly as a result of Mafia-ordered hacking.
In September 2011, many abusive and threatening graffiti messages appeared on the walls of the town of Partinico, such as "You've ruined this country!" and "The ruling has been issued", ostensibly directed against Maniaci. The federation of Italian journalists and the Sicilian federation of journalists expressed their solidarity with Telejato.
In December 2014, Maniaci found the two dogs he kept at home hung from a post near the station's studio. Maniaci linked the incident to Telejato’s coverage of drug use in the area. “The city is awash with cocaine, and we have been going very hard on that,” he stated to the press. “Cosa Nostra is always behind things like that.”
Accolades and controversies
Letizia Maniaci, Pino's daughter and Telejato's main reporter (Maniaci's son Giovanni also works at the station), has been awarded the Maria Grazia Cutuli journalism award for her work. Letizia Maniaci has written a book about her life, working in Telejato, which was published in Italy by Rizzoli, in March 2009.
In 2009, Pino Maniaci was indicted by Palermo public prosecutor Paoletta Caltabellotta for exercising the journalistic profession "without the necessary state license." The indictment did not reach the courts, as Maniaci was given honoris causa a journalistic license by the Italian federation of journalists.
Audience
Telejato's signal covers the province of Palermo, with an approximate target viewership of 150,000 people.