Enzo Biagi
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Enzo Biagi (born August 9, 1920) is a renowned Italian journalist. Biagi was born in Lizzano in Belvedere, and started his career as journalist in Bologna. Active in journalism for six decades and author of some eighty books, Biagi has won numerous awards, among them the 1979 Saint Vincent prize. He worked in Italian national TV (Raiuno) until 2001.
On May 9, 2001, just two days before the general elections in Italy, during his daily 10-minutes TV show on Raiuno, the major national channel of the country, Biagi interviewed popular actor and director Roberto Benigni, who did a extremely hilaurious talk about Silvio Berlusconi and declared humorously his preference for the other candidate, Francesco Rutelli of the Olive Tree coalition.
Biagi then disappeared from the TV screens a few months after the Berlusconi declarations in Bulgaria, where the Prime Minister accused the popular journalist, together with journalist Michele Santoro and showman Daniele Luttazzi, to have done a criminal use of television service.
Critics of Biagi argue that RAI - italian state-owned television - is a public service and therefore it should comply with political neutrality, while his defenders argue that a public service should provide pluralism, and that a country where the government forbids the opposing voices to be on air is a regime.
External links
- Repubblica: Benigni, TV show anti-Berlusconi (http://www.repubblica.it/online/politica/saticinque/benigni/benigni.html)
- Enzo Biagi, a political affair (http://www.comunitazione.it/leggi.asp?id_art=255)
- "Il fatto" di Enzo Biagi ("The event" by Enzo Biagi) (http://www.ilfatto.rai.it/)