E fundit!

14:51 TODAY

After more than 5 hours, Igli Tare leaves SPAK

Former Albanian national football team player, Igli Tare, ...

The greatness and misery of journalism

2025-04-05 21:50:00, Editorial Indro Montanelli

Translated by: Brizida Gjikondi

I know that many of you are interested in journalism and the means of communication. I began to cultivate this passion since high school, I have not wanted to do anything other than be a journalist, to the great disappointment of my father. He, as a good Director of a Lyceum, considered it with great contempt as a casual profession.

But journalism has been the great passion of my life. I admit that even though I have loved and continue to love this profession, I cannot advise any young person to take up this profession today, because I believe that journalism is already at its end.

It must be completely transformed, in a sense that I cannot foresee. I am attached to memories and come from a certain school, and at this age it is very difficult for me to think of anything different. I hope for you that there is room for a complete transformation, to take into account the serious events that have occurred in time – among which many are due to the fault and distortions of journalists – from the introduction of new technologies, where everything is a reversal of traditions.

Classic journalism, which I can't tear myself away from, is impossible to adapt to.

When I started, 60 years ago, we had as a technological touch, the typewriter "Olivetti Lettera 22", on which I continue to write. They no longer produce it, so I managed to buy five of them from antique dealers, which I have moved to different points. I can't go beyond that. I don't know how to use a fax, a close person does it for me, otherwise I wouldn't even know how to insert a sheet of paper.

We journalists have to reckon with a heartless enemy. And instead of fighting it, we have put ourselves at its service: this is television. I have the same ideas as Popper, television is the greatest disaster that could happen to us, because it was used precisely to be that. Newspapers have become megaphones for television, so we encounter 8-9 columns on Pipo Baudo or Alba Parieti. Television could be a great instrument for culture, but it is not. This is its job. What is our job, is that we have become megaphones, copying its customs and recognizing its superiority.

Italy, in addition to always mixing seriousness with vanity, has always treated vanity as the only serious thing. And, we do nothing but adapt by taking this perversity in our habits to the extreme. But, there is worse. Television teaches and paves the way for protagonism, which, when combined with journalism, has catastrophic effects. Television encourages the ugliest interest of bad journalists, the search for sensation at any cost. If any of you want to do this profession, save yourself from the temptation of sensation! Remember that it is the shortcut of donkeys. It allows you to get ahead, but badly. The public is a strange animal, it seems like one who understands little, but has a memory, and if you play with its trust, you are lost. This trust must be earned seriously and with effort, day after day. This does not save us from error, but imposes on us the obligation to denounce ourselves, when we realize the error, and to apologize to the reader.

If you want to pursue this profession, remember this: It is a profession that requires a lot of modesty, a lot, and protagonism is an obstacle to this fundamental law.

Today I look at the new directors. They are very good, of course, they are around 40 and 50 years old, they could be my children. But, they are not in management, I have them in mind, they are in the marketing offices, because the essential thing of a newspaper is the so-called audience. And, the audience brings advertising, because a newspaper must not only live, but also produce money, especially if it wants to be independent. A newspaper that has to ask someone for money is necessarily his servant. I lost the newspaper La Voce, because I was unable to bring it to an active balance sheet.

It is the audience in its most vile forms that forces us to trivialize even the newspaper, which in order to be printed must follow this path. But this path does not lead us anywhere. We have an increasingly bad journalism, because it is always in search of an audience, more and more in search of advertising, thus always satisfying the worst tastes of the public, instead of correcting them. Let's be clear, the public is always our owner, we cannot clash head-on, but we must educate. Without showing it to them, because there is nothing worse than behavior from the wise. I do not know if journalism is capable of achieving an evolution in this sense, but I do not see any signs. If I were 40 years younger, I would try to make a newspaper again. Now someone may be surprised, but I would follow the path opened by my old enemy Ferrara with Il Foglio. That newspaper is what I would have liked to do with La Voce, which I didn't have the power and opportunity to do. A newspaper that immediately matched its means with its costs, with few pages, that could get by without much advertising, with journalists-(ah)-paid little.

Yes, we are always paid little, because this profession is not done for money. On the contrary, if you meet a rich journalist, do not believe him. Journalism does not lead to wealth, it can lead to well-being, for the sake of truth. I am not complaining, I have enough for me, even more to live well. But, a rich journalist is a journalist who stinks, because he has used the profession to achieve other goals. A journalist who enslaves the profession – with apologies to the Prosecutor – I would shoot him.

As you can see, I'm not bringing you good news, but at this point I have to tell you something else. Maybe I did the wrong thing, but I don't regret it. I believe that journalism in Italy has played a mission, it has removed Italian culture from its strongholds, from the mafia gangs. I apologize for returning your hospitality in this way, but I have to tell you that journalism has been carrying out this task for decades, bringing culture to the public. Italian culture had a great need, because it doesn't know how to speak to the public. It has its own language, untranslated into the common language. Maybe you know that I don't have much to brag about 1968 and what I did there, because I still carry the marks and traces on my body, but the distant reasons of those boys who threw a bunch of bullets at me, maybe if I were their age I would share them with them. I probably would have left because the way they wanted to do things was wrong, but there was something ama. In rebelling in some noble way of understanding the culture, there is something right.

Who among you would like to do this craft should remember to choose his owner, the reader. To put himself at his service and speak his language, not that of the academy. To lead the culture of the academy towards understanding. Keep in mind that this has been one of the gravest betrayals in Italy and quite a few of these have been committed. Do you want proof? Take any writing from 1700's Italy and compare it with the pages of the French encyclopedia. The pages of Voltaire, of D'Alembert, are clear and lucid, everything is understood. In the others, nothing is understood: a disguised, unreal language, the language of princes. The language of culture in the service of God, which then turned into a party. That is, it deteriorated even more, because it was better to serve a Duke or Cardinal than a party. It was less unworthy, although it was also unworthy.

Remember that culture in Italy never spread, what little there was was made of journalism. If you want to do this work, this is the commitment you have to fulfill. To do it, there is no suffering that can change your mind, and this work is very beautiful. It doesn't take you anywhere but it is beautiful. Journalism is done for journalism, and for nothing else./ CNA