Enzo Biagi

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Enzo Biagi 2006

Enzo Biagi (born August 9, 1920 in Lizzano in Belvedere in the province of Bologna , † November 6, 2007 in Milan ) was an Italian journalist, author and television presenter.

biography

The beginnings

Enzo Biagi was born in Pianaccio, a small district of Lizzano in Belvedere in the Apennines . At the age of 9 he moved to live with his father in nearby Bologna. There he attended the Istituto Tecnico "Pier Crescenzi" , where he and friends started a small school newspaper. This newspaper, Il Picchio , was banned by the fascist rulers after a few months .

In 1937 the newspaper L'Avvenire d'Italia published for the first time an article by Biagi, in which he dealt with the question of whether the poet Marino Moretti should be included in the Crepuscolari movement . He continued his collaboration with the Avvenire through smaller articles and interviews with opera singers.

In 1940 he became a permanent employee of the Carlino Sera , the evening edition of the Bolognese newspaper Il Resto del Carlino . In 1942 he was drafted into the army, but was never drafted due to heart problems that had accompanied him for a lifetime. On December 18, 1943, he married the elementary school teacher Lucia Ghetti. A short time later he was forced to flee into the mountains, where he joined the Resistance and fought in the ranks of the partisan movement Giustizia e Libertà .

Towards the end of the war he moved into Bologna with Allied troops and announced the liberation on the radio. A short time later he was taken on again as a special reporter and film critic by the Resto del Carlino .

Journalistic career until the 1980s

Because of Biagi's rejection of nuclear weapons, he was named a communist by the publisher of the Resto del Carlino in 1951 and dismissed.

A few months later he was given the job of editor-in-chief of the Milan weekly Epoca from the publisher Arnoldo Mondadori . Again just a few months later he was appointed director. Biagi completely turned the magazine inside out, which had previously been in trouble, introduced new sections, changed the layout and turned the previous gossip sheet into a dedicated magazine. Under his leadership, Epoca reached a large readership thanks to some exclusive reports (e.g. about Pope Pius XII ). After Biagi wrote an article in 1960 about the demonstrations in Genoa and Reggio nell'Emilia against the National Congress of the fascist MSI and sharply criticized Prime Minister Fernando Tambroni , he had to give up his position as head of the magazine. A few months later he was hired as a special reporter by the Turin newspaper La Stampa .

On October 1, 1961, Biagi was appointed director of the Telegiornale (comparable to the German Tagesschau). According to some voices, his attitude was a concession to the socialists , who were then making their first rapprochement with the Italian Christian Democrats . Biagi hired some of the best-known Italian journalists such as Giorgio Bocca and Indro Montanelli at the public service company. Protests soon broke out from Giuseppe Saragat's social democratic party and right-wing parties who cursed Biagi as “communists”. In 1963, Biagi also introduced a news program on the second RAI program . In the same year, Biagi created RT-Rotocalco Televisivo , the first weekly political magazine on Italian television. A short time later he had to resign from this post under pressure from his opponents.

In 1971, after having written for the Corriere della Sera and the weekly magazine L'Europeo , among others , he became director of the Resto del Carlino with the task of making this Bolognese newspaper successful nationally. During this time he began working again with the RAI. A program in which Biagi showed the shrouded briefcase of the banker Roberto Calvi , murdered in 1982, caused a stir .

Il Fatto

In 1995, the post-news broadcast of the Il Fatto program, which explored the main topics of the day, began with Biagi as the host. In 2004, Il Fatto , which had an average audience of 6 million, was voted the best RAI program of the past 50 years by a jury of journalists. The interviews with Marcello Mastroianni , Sophia Loren , Indro Montanelli and Roberto Benigni , the latter in the middle of the 2001 election campaign , became famous in the program . In it, Benigni humorously commented on Berlusconi's conflict of interests and his contract with the Italians . This interview provoked harsh polemics against Benigni and Biagi. The MP for the Alleanza Nazionale and later Minister of Communications, Maurizio Gasparri, asked for Biagi to be released from the RAI during a conversation with a Lombard broadcaster.

The Biagi case

On April 18, 2002, the then Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi demanded in a press conference the dismissal of journalists Michele Santoro , comedian Daniele Luttazzi and Enzo Biagis, who, in the opinion of the Cavaliere, had committed criminal abuse on public television. This utterance by Berlusconi during a visit to Sofia soon became known as the editto bulgaro (Bulgarian Edict). Biagi replied that evening on his broadcast, recalling that freedom of the press and freedom of expression are important principles of a democracy. A short time later, the RAI discontinued the program with the official reason that the ratings were too weak. The then director of RAI 1 later had to admit in a parliamentary commission of inquiry that the ratings for Il Fatto were not as bad as claimed and even better than all other programs that were subsequently broadcast on the same slot.

Due to numerous protests, the RAI Biagi offered other broadcasting slots for Il Fatto , but the latter declined because the broadcast times before the news were absurd if you wanted to go into a topic in more depth. The transfer to the third RAI program was also considered, but was rejected by the RAI 3 director for reasons of cost. After much back and forth, Biagi finally decided to quit his job at the television station.

Biagi then wrote for the weekly magazines L'Espresso and Oggi (magazine) and the Corriere della Sera . On April 22, 2007, Biagi returned six months before his death as the presenter of the RT program - Rotocalco Televisivo .

Awards

Works (selection)

  • Un anno Una vita (1992), a book that three interviews with thoughts and reflections on Antonio Di Pietro , Giovanni Falcone and Tommaso Buscetta contains
  • La disfatta , (1993), an investigation into the Tangentopoli scandal in the early 1990s
  • I come Italiani (1972), a kind of anthropological encyclopedia about the defects and virtues of Italy
  • Il boss è solo (1986), interviews with confessed mafiosi
  • Il sole malato (1987), report on AIDS
  • L'Italia dei peccatori (1989), a book about the vices of Italy
  • L'albero dai fiori bianchi (1994), collection of Biagi's daily reflections
  • Il signor Fiat , investigation into the Agnelli family
  • La bella vita (1996), interview with the actor Marcello Mastroianni
  • Sogni perduti (1997), essay on the dark side of personalities like Indro Montanelli , Alcide De Gasperi or Angelo Rizzoli
  • Scusate, dimenticavo (1997), autobiographical memories and reflections
  • Racconto di un secolo (1999), interviews about the 20th century with well-known contemporary witnesses
  • Lettera d'amore a una ragazza di una volta (2003), letter to his deceased wife
  • Il Fatto (2003), collection of interviews
  • La mia America (2004), essay on the American dream and the presidency of George W. Bush
  • Era ieri (2005), autobiography in collaboration with Loris Mazzetti
  • Quello che non si doveva dire (2006), essay on the Bulgarian Edict

Also:

  • three comics, namely Columbus (1992; with Milo Manara ), Storia d'Italia a fumetti and La storia dei popoli a fumetti
  • the novels Disonora il padre (1975) and Una signora so così (1979)
  • a series of reports published in the Geografia di Enzo Biagi series
  • the historical books 1935 e dintorni (1982), 1943 e dintorni (1983) and Noi c'eravamo 1939–45 (1990)

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Announcement on La Repubblica of March 9, 1993, accessed on September 10, 2016.
  2. ↑ http://www.quirinale.it/elementi/DettaglioOnorificenze.aspx?decorato=11497

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Biagi, Enzo
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Italian journalist, author and television presenter
DATE OF BIRTH August 9, 1920
PLACE OF BIRTH Lizzano in Belvedere
DATE OF DEATH November 6, 2007
Place of death Milan