Veteran Italian journalist Enzo Biagi died yesterday aged 87 in a Milan hospital after years suffering heart problems.
The journalist and prolific author who stood out for his straightforward style and irreverent questions was a bastion of journalistic freedom in a country where journalism is often convoluted and closely intertwined with politics.
For years, Biagi’s white hair, thick-framed eyeglasses and calm voice were a staple on Italian state TV during Italians’ dinner hour as he offered his commentary on the top stories of the day on his short daily programme Il Fatto.
The same programme ended abruptly in 2002 after then Premier Silvio Berlusconi – himself the owner of a media empire in competition with state television channels – alleged that Biagi and two other prominent journalists were making “criminal use” of publicly funded RAI television to push a left-leaning agenda. He was then reinstated under Prodi’s government.
Biagi’s career started under the last years of Benito Mussolini’s rule, spanning over sixty years alternating TV work with writing best-selling books and articles for Rome daily La Repubblica, news weekly Panorama, Milan daily Corriere della Sera and Turin-based La Stampa.
Born in Lizzano in Belvedere, an Apennine town near Bologna in 1920, Biagi started working as a reporter when he was 18 for Bologna daily Resto del Carlino. Several years later, he covered the Allied forces’ liberation of Italy.
From 1952 to 1960 Biagi was based in Milan, directing the news weekly Epoca. He also started working in television, becoming news director of state TV’s newscast and began a talk show called “Dicono di lei” (They’re talking about you).
Bice Biagi, one of two daughters who had been at his bedside for days at the hospital, told reporters her father was sleeping peacefully when he passed away yesterday.
“He left us an extraordinary lesson in journalism,” Stefano Folli, an editorialist for Il Sole-24 Ore daily said on Sky TG24 TV. Biagi was “a great witness to history, to events” who “spoke an extraordinarily simple language,” Folli said.
With Biagi’s death, “a great voice of freedom” vanishes, said Italian President Giorgio Napolitano.
Biagi was known for his boundless energy, working until his last days.
“He used to tell me: ‘If there’s some assignment that some lazy journalist doesn’t want, call me and I’ll go,’” Corriere della Sera editor Paolo Mieli told the Italian news agency Apcom.
Among his more notable interviews was one in 1986 with Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi outside a tent in that north African country a few hours before U.S. bombers attacked Tripoli.
He was known for irreverent questioning.
While interviewing a priest in the Amazon forest, his first question was: “Do you ever miss women?”
Biagi’s funeral was scheduled to be held Thursday in his native town.