Journalists From Italy

"This applies to young journalists. Not all of them, of course, but many. They are ignorant. They may be intelligent, but they are ignorant. In the sense that school has taught them little in recent years. And they have learned even less on their own. (p. 28)"

"Fabio Fazio}} He too is red, a cherry red that is unmatched even on the vermilion Rai Tre. But he loves to play the opposite role. That of the innocent little priest without a parish, friend to all and enemy to none. In reality, in today's Rai, fragmented into sultanates, there is no one more partisan than him. His hand is wrapped in gray velvet, but inside he hides a poisoned stiletto. It is with this blade that Fazio practices inflexible censorship. [...] Fazio had invited Pietro Ingrao [...]. In a moment of memory loss, the old communist leader claimed that the Italian Communist Party had strongly distanced itself from the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956. A complete falsehood, as history teaches us. But Fazio and the invited audience were careful not to object. Not even a murmur, a cough, or a sidelong glance. Why? Edmondo Berselli, a free-thinking intellectual who recently passed away, explained it this way in L'Espresso: “Because at that moment, they were celebrating the apotheosis of an impossible communism, a utopia, a great dream, an assault on heaven. And so much the worse for the facts, if the facts interrupt the emotions.” Fazio is not interested in the truth of the facts. Especially when he paints a picture of Italian history and reality that clashes with his narrow political horizon."

"Satire is banned on Rai, except when it is directed against Il Caimano, hated by the red sultans. These are the masters of the many talk shows controlled by the guerrilla left. Those who, with public money, taxes and license fees paid by us foolish taxpayers, have given themselves a fanatical mission: to send Berlusconi and the center-right to hell. [...] They know they have a militant audience behind them and they excite them in many ways. [...] They move like the Khmer Rouge in Pol Pot's Cambodia. They don't cut off their opponents' heads, but they attack with the same rapid brazenness, provoking the enemy and launching surprise attacks. “Come away with me” is the clearest example of this tactic. [...] The story is an example of what Italy has become. A Babel where only the destroyers are in charge. While the Casta fills its mouth with the word “legality” and at the same time destroys it. Like the double-dealing Fini. He will have the kiss of Fazio and Saviano, even though he is glued to a chair he no longer deserves."

"I was outraged and frightened by the assault on the Senate, which saw a team of hooded men break through the first entrance. The Senate, like the Chamber of Deputies, belongs to all Italians. And I am appalled by the question posed by La Stampa on Thursday. It said: “Must we respect the Senate? Even if Schifani is there?” This small, not very ironic detail is enough to suggest that the left is no longer playing with fire, but with death."

"The news program Sky TG24 is sick with anti-Cav sectarianism. It seems to me that it has become Murdoch's Telekabul. A twin of Tg3, Rai's red news program. Strange? Not really. The owner of Sky, the Australian Rupert Murdoch, the Shark, does not like Berlusconi at all. And since the beginning of time, the donkey has always been tied where the master wants. Especially if it is a television donkey."

"Today's street protests are not being led by students. They are being led by another privileged class: university professors and researchers. They do not want to lose their privileges, which are considerable for the former and modest for the latter. That is what matters to them, not the comatose state of Italian universities."

"(About the daily newspaper la Repubblica}} A guerrilla paper that goes into battle every day to destroy Berlusconi."

"There are no valid reasons for such chaos, which has a very clear political objective: to bring down the Berlusconi government. Perhaps this will not be a difficult task, given the comatose state of the executive. But even if it succeeds, it will not erase the hypocrisy of too many media outlets. Newspapers and television are mostly on the side of the protesters."

"Well, I must confess that I haven't read all of Giampaolo Pansa's books thoroughly because I feel nauseous when I pick them up, but I know more or less how they are perceived by those who read them. We cannot get inside Giampaolo Pansa's head, so we cannot know whether this man, who used to be a left-winger, had a change of heart at some point and really said to himself: the defeated deserve to be remembered... an injustice has been done in Italy... Whether he realised the effect his books were having, or whether he realised it but cynically carried on because they made him a lot of money. We can no longer say; certainly the books are despicable, not because they may contain inaccuracies [...]. But I would not be at all surprised if these books only reported authentic episodes, because it has always been known in Italy that obviously anything could have happened in the Resistance. These are things that even in the 1950s the fascists, who incidentally were perfectly free in a democracy to publish books in which they recounted these things, so everyone already knew about them even before. [...] So, dramatic episodes? Tragic? Crimes? Crimes committed by partisans with the authorisation of the Allied authorities, who generally told the partisans to “clean up”? Who can say it doesn't matter? Of course, it is always a tragedy, but if we look at the crimes committed by the liberators, then what? The armies that marched up the peninsula committed crimes against the civilian population, against prisoners of war... Ever since they landed in Sicily, and yet the people of Italian cities welcomed them jubilantly, happy that they had arrived. So, the problem is that you can always find individual episodes in any context to put anyone in a good or bad light: what matters is who was on the right side and who was on the wrong side. And I challenge anyone today who turns up their nose at the partisans or has Pansa's books on their bookshelf in plain view to say: 'But would you have preferred the others to win? Would you want to live in a world where Hitler had won? And where the gas chambers would have continued to operate? Really? If you tell me that sincerely, I'm fine with it, okay. But I want to see which readers of Pansa's books would answer yes to that question."

"Leonardo Pieraccioni, whom an unexpectedly controversial Carlo Verdone has called a “comedian of nothing.”"

"(About the film Life Is Beautiful}} Instead of relying on a lazy rehash of himself, Benigni has decided to perform like an acrobat, oops, on the reckless tightrope of the comic-tragic."

"Here is the latest from the master [Roberto Benigni] who, in terms of box office predictions, has to contend with his pupil, assuming that Vergaio's jester has anything in common, apart from his Tuscan origins, with the big kid Pieraccioni."

"Finally, I had followed the surprising career of Piersanti Mattarella [brother of the Italian President Mattarella]. His career developed in the shadow of his powerful father Bernardo, who was a minister several times and a great collector of votes and friendships, some of which were compromising, in Castellammare del Golfo, in western Sicily, home to the most ruthless mafia. [...] We must not betray our origins if they have brought us privileges and benefits. And Piersanti had unfortunately forgotten that he was the eldest son of Bernardo and his vows."

"There are those who reproach q:it:Massimo Fini for squandering his enormous talent, as if talent could be used for anything other than squandering it. He did so in the only way permitted to a true journalist: through the right reading, through writing, through the integrity of his ideas. But above all, by relying on the immeasurable ignorance of his colleagues. [...] I would have loved to have been friends with Massimo Fini in the 1970s and breathe in the exhilaration of that joyful and unknown journalism, which is not a job but a gift from the gods, accompanied by the amazement that at the end of the month they even pay you."

"How many times have I asked myself whether it was possible to tie oneself to a mass without ever having loved anyone .. whether one could love a collectivity if one hadn’t deeply loved some single human beings . . . Wouldn’t this have made barren my qualities as a revolutionary, wouldn’t it have reduced them to a pure intellectual fact, a pure mathematical calculation?"

"In the third grade classroom, on a day I will never forget, a nun came in and told us how evil the Germans were, that they killed ten Italians for every one of their soldiers who died, and then used the fat from their corpses to make soap. [...] And in the class, suddenly silent, a classmate pointed her finger at me and exclaimed: “You're one of them too, Gruber!”"

"The idea of borders and integration is in my DNA. [...] Precisely because, as a child, I was always considered “different.” At home, I spoke German, and our family traditions were decidedly Austro-Hungarian. But you can be different anywhere."

"(About South Tyrol) I am convinced that this land, seemingly small and peripheral compared to empires and republics, has been an important crossroads, both for the history of Europe and for that of our country."

"I felt, and still feel, the need to describe a very complex reality that is often reduced by the media to sterile clichés. This feeling has been reinforced by developments in relations with Islam since September 11, and the Iran issue is a striking example of this. Today, rather than proclaiming axes of evil, it is more important to build axes of good."

"Interviewer: You have identified a “Gruber style”: blunt, even aggressive responses. Did you study your character? Lilli Gruber: I never study characters. I just try to do my job with my back straight, without professional scoliosis. I could say that when women are determined, they become annoying and castrating, but when men are determined, they become decisive and virile. I'll leave it to others to judge the “Gruber style.”"

"The commentators represent different points of view, but they share the ability to offer original and non-trivial thinking. I find them well suited to an in-depth program."

"Never go against the flow, or you risk not reaching your goal."

"You must say “not” to the men who deny you power, profit, and pleasure."

"In Scandinavian countries, but also in a large and important country like Germany, there are many women at the top of parties and institutions. As always, it is first and foremost a cultural problem and then a political one, which needs legislative incentives to evolve. Therefore, gender quotas, however odious from a philosophical point of view, remain a necessity for a transition period that should be as short as possible. Italy cannot afford the luxury of giving up the great resource that women represent."

"Power may well be disgusting, as men keep telling us, but in the meantime, we want it."

"I have great respect for journalism and journalists who do their job seriously. One of the fundamental principles of serious journalism is to distinguish information from entertainment. These two genres should not be mixed. Journalism is one thing, entertainment is another. For too many years now, we have been accustomed to seeing infotainment on TV, which has destroyed serious journalism. Be wary of those who want to sell you reality and information by entertaining you. But what does entertainment have to do with information and journalism? Nothing, absolutely nothing."

"In all democracies, starting with the American one, if someone lies about their private life, what kind of politician can they ever be?"

"(Speaking of propaganda during the Iraq War) Television fiction seems to be gradually replacing the reality of journalistic reporting. This is necessary to prevent public opinion from rebelling and putting pressure on governments that have already once ignored the protests of the majority of their citizens opposed to war in order to engage their country in a conflict with no way out. [...] Our leaders want us to live in the best of television worlds. Unfortunately, this paradise is the hell of democracy."

"The European Parliament is certainly a unique observatory where you often encounter the best and sometimes the worst of politics."

"In Italy, there is also a sense of impunity: if you are a man, and especially a man in power, you are untouchable. Women do not have the courage to report abuse, or are often harsher on other women, and men are mostly complicit. We have wasted decades on useless debates, such as the one on quotas. You have to start with facts and figures: where women have been included, there has been a rebalancing and companies have improved. Often, the self-harming behavior of those who do not want to be judged as a panda category comes into play. But whether you like it or not, we are judged and treated differently from men."

"We women must love Europe because it is the first and, for now, the only successful example of peaceful coexistence between nations to build a project of well-being and defense of fundamental values such as social and women's rights."

"I am attacked every day on social media with intolerable sexism and vulgarity. This is also because the degradation of language becomes physical brutality and real violence. It is serious that there is no punishment: verbal violence—even anonymous violence, which is even more cowardly—must be punished immediately, and we have all the tools to do so."

"I am appalled by rude and sexist politicians like Salvini who campaign in their underwear or Trump who say things like “you grab women by the p***y.” How can anyone think of entrusting the country to a man who has said such a thing? At the very least, he will mistreat women and citizens."

"I still remember a press conference in Amman with King Hussein of Jordan during the first Gulf War. I wanted to ask the king why he had grown a beard, but I was afraid it was a stupid question and didn't raise my hand. A colleague asked the question shortly afterwards and the king smiled and replied that it was to mask irritation caused by the stress of war. I was ashamed of my self-sabotage."

"Lilli Gruber, Basta! Il potere delle donne contro la politica del testosterone, Collana I Solferini, Milano, Solferino, 2019. ISBN 978-88-282-0311-7"

"The incompetence of men in power is causing too much damage. We must no longer apologize for existing. We are more talented and more competent, and we demand power."

"Europe needs to be “fixed,” but not destroyed. For a thousand reasons, not least because it guarantees peace and democracy, two things that we, with our short memories, too often take for granted. The latest poll tells us that 8 out of 10 young Italians feel like European citizens. And that reassures me."

"The battle for women's empowerment goes hand in hand with the battle for the survival of the planet."

"It is no longer tolerable that so many important countries in the world, from the US to Brazil, are in the hands of an international group of misogynistic rednecks who harm not only women, but everyone."

"The three male “Vs”—vulgarity, violence, and visibility, the result of impotent and aggressive masculinity—must be replaced by empathy, diplomacy, and patience. Men must be re-educated. We have read many books about women who love too much or work too hard. Well, it's time for men who love too little or work too little to go back to school. Let them learn to be more feminine."

"Girls need to know that professional life is not a game of seduction. Would I dress sexy if I had a female boss?"

"I was seen as sour or aggressive, whereas if I had been a man, they would have said I was determined."

"(About Padre Pio) His profile of holiness is everything except what one usually imagines: blue, haloed, joyful. Quite the opposite."

"Padre Pio always lived between heaven and earth. Literally."

"Padre Pio never theorised anything. The epochal disputes of the conciliar Church did not even touch him."

"His sweet life Padre Pio began by flying to heaven [...], because he was never blessed on earth."

"(On brain death) The irreversibility of the loss of brain functions, ascertained by a ‘flat encephalogram’, does not prove the death of the individual. The total loss of the unity of the organism, understood as the ability to integrate and coordinate all its functions, does not in fact depend on the brain, nor even on the heart. The ascertainment of the cessation of breathing and heartbeat does not mean that the heart or lungs are the source of life. If legal and medical tradition, not only in the West, has always considered that death should be ascertained through the cessation of cardiovascular activity, it is because experience shows that the cessation of such activity is followed, after a few hours, by rigor mortis and then the beginning of the disintegration of the body. This does not happen in any way after the cessation of brain activity. Today, science allows women with flat encephalograms to carry their pregnancies to term and give birth to healthy babies. An individual in a state of “irreversible coma” can be kept alive with the support of artificial means; a corpse can never be revived, even if connected to sophisticated equipment."

"The truth is that the definition of brain death was proposed by Harvard Medical School in the summer of 1968, a few months after the first heart transplant performed by Christian Barnard (December 1967), to ethically justify heart transplants, which required that the heart of the donor still be beating, meaning that, according to traditional medical standards, he was still alive. In this case, the removal of the heart was equivalent to murder, albeit carried out “for a good cause”. Science posed a dramatic moral question: is it permissible to kill a sick person, even if they are terminally ill or irreversibly injured, in order to save another human life of superior “quality”?"

"The real problem is that the price to pay for saving these lives is the tragic one of suppressing others. The utilitarian principle that one can do evil to achieve good is being replaced by the Western and Christian maxim that it is not permissible to do evil, even to achieve a greater good. Whereas in the past the traditional “signs” of death were used to ascertain that a living person was not considered dead, today the new Harvard criterion treats the living as corpses in order to be able to transplant them."

"(About the Jehovah's Witnesses ) Their founder was a former Presbyterian and then Adventist, Charles Taze Russell. He preached the imminent end of this evil world and the advent of God's Kingdom on earth. And so he instilled in his followers the feverish activism of the great eve. They went from house to house, in pairs, to spread the Bible and a magazine, ‘The Watchtower’, founded in Brooklyn in 1879 and since then translated into all the languages of the world, the repository of their doctrine. A true organisational talent, Russell was the first to apply door-to-door advertising methods, the potential of a popular press such as Reader's Digest, and the appeal of the nascent cinematic arts to religious preaching. A magnificent film was, in fact, their advertisement."