The Rai Social Action Department, together with the Permanent Confrontation Office commissioned Censis (the National Statistics institute) to carry out an evaluation survey, with data provided by the Radio-Television Audience Centre, on how state television represents the painful events involving children.

Censis analysed the contents of 3 months of Rai programmes.

From this analysis it emerged that:

• television newscasts give a great deal of space and importance to this kind of news: in 68% of cases the news services last from 2 to 10 minutes and many programmes that go into more depth dedicated much more than 10 minutes to this kind of news service.
  The times at which these news are dealt with are also the peak viewing times. In 34.4% of cases it is the main item of the newscast or the programmes and in 63.4% it is one of the main news items;
• the most commonly presented subject is crime; the services are all focussed on a single case (78%). In 60% of cases the elements supplied by the services really contribute to the knowledge of the facts, but in 22.7% they are of purely emotional impact, and in 17.5% they are totally superfluous;
• in 77.8% of cases the language is balanced;
• the images, however, have a documentary function in 77% of cases, while in 10% of cases they serve to make the news more spectacular, indulging in the description of details in almost 30%, and are superfluous and even morbid in 5.3% of cases;
• on the whole, the information cannot be described as incorrect and instrumental, but some cases, like that of Cogne, because of public attention and the "structural" characteristics of the event, they evidently produced a sort of confusion as regards the narration of the facts and short circuited the best intentions. In 71.8% of the newscasts in the month of February, Cogne was the principle news item; the television newscasts followed the story step by step, but only in 14.3% of cases was there any really new information given. In 53.1%, in fact, the people interviewed added nothing; the language was generally controlled, but there was an excess of expressive forms typical of story telling, of narration. The description was informative in 67.9% of cases, but in 24.4% it evoked suspicions. The fact was described objectively and with compassion, but it was repetitive in 61.5% of cases. In the month of February, 38 programmes giving a more in-depth study or services on the Cogne case were broadcast, 63% of which gave superfluous elements. The experts called on gave information that was really new in less than 30% of cases: the language used, also in the case of the programmes, was that of story telling: the event was told objectively in 31% of cases, but the description was repetitive (52,6%) and emphatic (31.6 %);
• fiction: 9 fiction programmes were analysed ("Dieci storie di bambini", "L'uomo che piaceva alle donne", "Cuore", "Io ti salver÷", "La casa dell'angelo", "Un posto al sole"; "Vento di ponente"; "Incantesimo", "La squadra"). Surprisingly, it turned out that fiction paid great attention to social matters (immigration, relationships between the generations, areas in cities for children, and so on, with the problems well articulated and from an all round viewpoint, with adequate and correct language and contents.