Premier Silvio Berlusconi's private TV network Mediaset on Tuesday accepted the resignation of one of Italy's best-known news show hosts in a row over how the network covered the sudden death of a woman at the centre of a right-to-die battle.
Enrico Mentana, who presented Mediaset's flagship news show Matrix, quit Monday evening after the network refused to pull a scheduled Big Brother eviction programme on its main channel to cover the death of Eluana Englaro, who had been in a permanent vegetative state for 17 years.
Other networks such as state broadcaster RAI, Sky and LA7 immediately rescheduled programmes to make way for prime-time coverage of the case, which has sparked national debate and pitched the government and the Catholic Church against libertarians.
Mediaset covered the death on a secondary channel, Rete 4, but decided to press ahead with Big Brother on Channel 5 despite Mentana - who was also the network's editorial director - being ready to go on air with a Matrix special.
''Choices such as this damage the credibility of those that make them, and I personally have no intention of endorsing them,'' Mentana said Monday evening. ''Tonight on Channel 5 the drama was the eviction of a Big Brother contestant''.
The Channel 5 news team expressed their solidarity with Mentana.
''While RAI turned its schedule on its head for a special (topical news show), on the screens of Channel 5 the only tears shed were those of Federica in the Big Brother house. ''It's embarrassing, and unworthy of a great channel like Channel 5, which has a duty to keep its viewers informed,'' they said.
''The company's decision to accept so freely the resignation of one of the most authoritative Italian journalists is disturbing,'' they added.
On Monday evening Big Brother presenter Alessia Marcuzzi expressed sympathy with Eluana's family at the beginning of the show, which drew the evening's greatest share of television viewers - around 32%, or almost eight million.
RAI's news special on Eluana pulled in just over four million.
Channel 5 went on to cover Eluana's death at midnight, after Big Brother had ended.
The network's news director-general, Mauro Crippa, said Tuesday ''we must never forget that the public has different needs''.
Reacting to Monday night's viewing statistics, Italy's Communications Authority President Corrado Calabro' hit out at reality shows for dumbing down television.
''They aren't helping to improve Italians culturally,'' he said.
