R O M E, Sept. 28, 2000 -- Italians are reeling from a prime time news broadcast on two state-run channels that showed graphic footage of child pornography for a report on a pedophile ring.

Top managers and a handful of other journalists resigned today, and prosecutors have started an investigation to see whether the journalists can be charged with disseminating child pornography.

The news report, broadcast to an estimated 10 million viewers, detailed arrests surrounding a 19-month investigation of a pedophile ring that used the Internet.

Eight people were arrested in Italy and three were arrested in Russia. Police said 1,700 people were being investigated in Italy on suspicion of having bought child pornography online.

One part of the footage on Wednesday night showed a man lying on a floor while he forced a nude boy to sit on him.

The issue of the TV broadcasts has become highly charged because management positions in the state-run RAI channels are assigned politically, and Italy is in a pre-election period.

However, the political issue now risks overshadowing the real problem, which is pedophilia and the use of the Internet to market horrific crimes.

“I feel that in this circumstance it is important to avoid political manipulation, which pushes the real problem into the background,” Vatican spokesman, Joaquin Navarro Valls said today.

Anger in Parliament

“What happened is absolutely unforgivable,” said former prime minister and media magnate Silvio Berlusconi, head of the center-right opposition, whose own private television channels did not run the footage.

The opposition, which sees RAI as a mouthpiece for the governing center-left coalition, has demanded that heads roll.

The station was flooded with calls immediately after the newscast, forcing the executive producer of the report to appear live on air to apologize.

“We broadcast some images about pedophiles that were simply despicable as well as violent and we feel obliged to apologize for this, ” said Gad Lerner, the executive producer of the newscast aired on the RAI-1 channel.

“We failed to check the piece, and naturally, as director of the newscast, I assume full responsibility,” he said.

He promised “mistakes of this kind will not happen again.”

Lerner as well as Giovanni Rizzo Nervo, executive producer of the newscast aired on RAI-2 channel, along with a handful of other journalists resigned today following a heated parliamentary debate.

Communications Minister Salvatore Cardinale told parliament that magistrates had begun a probe and were pondering whether the journalists could be charged under an Italian law that bans the distribution of child pornography.

Fury in the Press

The scandal also dominated morning news bulletins and newspapers.

Rome’s La Repubblica dedicated three pages to the story, naming it “The Supermarket of Horrors.” The newspaper report details how Italians ordered videos, CDs and DVDs, some containing images of children abused until they died.

In an editorial titled “The Silence of the Lambs,” Turin’s La Stampa said it was “frightening” that at least 1,700 Italians were being investigated for allegedly ordering material from an organization based in Russia.

“They are links in a chain of monsters,” La Stampa said. They say good morning to you, talk about the health of their children, about politics, and all the while, an evil film is running through their brain,” La Stampa said.

“From our comfortable seat in life … we never could have imagined that thousands of well-off adults, integrated and even cultured, find pleasure in seeing children tortured and killed,” the Corriere della Sera newspaper said in a front-page editorial.

Disturbing Details

Naples-based police specializing in Internet crime said some 600 homes in Italy were searched in the early hours of Wednesday and eight people were arrested on charges of possessing and trading in child pornography, all of which was from Russia.

They said three people in Russia ran an operation to kidnap children from orphanages, circuses and public parks and film them while they were forced to commit sexual acts.

The packages ordered on the Internet were intercepted when they arrived by mail and were repacked. They were then delivered to the addressees by undercover police officers disguised as postal workers and carrying hidden cameras.

The material cost between $400 and $6,000 for each video or disc depending on the type of film the customer wanted — the more horrific the more costly.

The service was divided into several categories. SNIPE was the term given by the ring for videos of children filmed nude without their knowledge, mostly in department store dressing rooms, police said.

CP was the code word for ordering an item from a pedophile’s “private collection.”

The most gruesome, police said, was coded “Necros Pedo,” in which children were raped and tortured to death.

ABCNEWS’ Ann Wise in Rome, Linda Albin in London, and Reuters contributed to this report.