The news is crazy, surreal, it’s hard to believe it: the order of journalists would have opened a complaint against Corrado Formigli and his Piazza Pulita for having shown a child’s shoes in the episode of Thursday 2 March.
Corrado, is it real news or is it fake?
“That’s what I’ve read about agencies too. I don’t know more. Yesterday Ansa called me and told me that a note had been issued by the Executive Committee of the National Council of the order asking for an assessment, without prejudice to the right to report, of making a tragedy into a spectacle. The disputed fact is that Piazza Pulita showed, on the study table, the shoe that Sara Giudice, the excellent correspondent who had been to Cutro, had brought with her on her return. A slipper collected on the beach. During the editorial I did at the beginning of the broadcast on this massacre, this shoe was framed for a few seconds, at the moment I was referring to it. That’s all”.
It’s hard to believe it.
“Yes, it seems like news from another world. Martian news, but this is happening in Italy in 2023. The interesting thing is that in the note from the Executive Committee of our Order, it says “we have received numerous reports…”. So, the first thing I ask the order is to make public the people who have made these reports. That is, I would like to know if the report was made by a distraught mother or by, I don’t know, Senator Gasparri. The second thing: the note speaks of “use of spectacularization”. But who decides what is spectacularization? Why did the newspapers have on the front page of these poor children’s bottles, shoes and objects the day before, and instead you can’t show a shoe on television? What is the difference? Who decides?”
One could say that the power of what you have done, that is to show the artifact on television, is truly an immeasurable storytelling power. No detail of Piazza Pulita has ever been left to chance, with your fine team of authors and journalists: have you made an informed choice?
“I believe that television feeds on images and symbols. When I went to Somaliland, the poorest and most drought-stricken place in the world, I returned with a jerry can of a person who was dying of thirst, to a hut in Africa. I picked up that tank because it was the symbol of African peoples who walk hundreds of kilometers to look for a trickle of water and put it into these tanks. Which are the symbol of a great tragedy. Likewise, this slipper is a symbol of a tragedy. When we do television, we obviously use images and we do so within context. In the case we are talking about, the context was not that of dwarfs and dancers. On the contrary, he coherently explained what had happened to these children and what had happened in this massacre due to the absence of the state”.
The shoe was there, on the site of the massacre. You have only filmed reality, how can we be offended if a journalist tells reality?
“Here, I tell you more. Sara Giudice took this shoe, she didn’t tell us anything when she was there, and when she returned to Rome to write down her beautiful reportage of her, she brought it to me. I thought that this shoe was, shall we say, the continuation of Sara’s story. It was a choice shared by all of us in the editorial staff”.
What do you think is due to the Order’s intervention?
“I wonder if the order of journalists exists or does. That is, if there is simply a sort of reflection of extreme correctness, of a bit old-fashioned respectability. Or if, on the other hand, this committee is not lending itself to an operation of censorship by the Government towards an unwelcome journalistic programme. It is clear that ours is a narrative that the government does not like at all. After all, this government often uses even threatening tools. Let’s think of the principal Savino in Florence. We think of the Viminale doctor, Amodeo, on the beach of Cutro who was threatened with measures. I hope it’s not true, I don’t want to believe it is. I hope it is a jolt of correctness, honestly a little ridiculous. However, at the same time, I would like to point out to the order of journalists that we must be careful not to lend ourselves, perhaps involuntarily, to the wishes of censorship. It is no coincidence that today the newspaper greeted and praised the provision of the Order, it is “Libero”, which even applauded on the front page. The same “Libero” who had published headlines such as “After poverty, migrants bring malaria” or “GDP decreases and gays increase”. I wonder, what did the Order of Journalists do with that newspaper there? Here you are”.
And he also published the advice of Vittorio Feltri who tweeted yesterday saying “Leaving is a bit like dying. And today he reiterated it.
“Stay at home, that’s what he said.”
Francesco Merlo says that not everyone can afford the same words. Paraphrasing it, it seems different if a shoe is shown in a variety program on pain television, it is quite another thing if it is in an information program that has made its vocation, storytelling, reportage, going to places identity. You were an envoy, you even risked your life, under the bombs in the besieged city of Kobanê, in present-day Syrian Kurdistan…
“It was 2014. We were the first to cross the border between Turkey and Syria to enter Kobanê, which was then in the hands of ISIS. We crossed the border under bombardment, at night, with only a rucksack on our shoulders. A smuggler walked us up to the barbed wire, then we had to go in alone. I suffer from migraines, so I always carry my headache medicine with me and on that occasion, when I was about halfway through the desperate run through this field, in the dark, I realized that I had left my rucksack in the smuggler’s car, even with all the money, the phone charger and everything I needed. But when I later returned safely from that report, which has become somewhat historic, I also realized that my wife had forgotten to renew my life insurance policy. I only knew it when I went back.”
You, however, have always been involved in telling the stories of children in these theaters of war.
“Yes, always. I told of the children who were kidnapped together with their mothers by Isis. My professional life is dedicated to the narration of these tragedies. What you said is true: I am aware that there is a risk of making pain spectacular, but it all depends on the context. Our context was very coherent and very focused on the story of that tragedy. The slipper fit perfectly into this picture. This is why I appeal to the order of journalists: let us all try to make a contribution to telling the truth. This means, for example, that we also have to show the bodies of the victims. I fight every week against the legal departments, because theoretically the dead shouldn’t be shown. But war is made up of deaths. We cannot give in to a story that must necessarily be compatible with the plate of pasta we eat for dinner in which the images must not disturb. Television must disturb, it must shock, it must be able to do so. I think this is the reasoning that – calmly – must be done”.
How did the editorial staff of Piazza Pulita react to the news of the Order’s intervention?
“We have all been very impressed and undecided on what to do. You’re the first ones I talk to about it, because I honestly decided not to talk. I do it out of sympathy for your newspaper, but I really don’t want to go back to it again”.
You won’t talk about it next Thursday in Piazza Pulita?
“I think I’ll talk about it in some way. I think this slipper should become the symbol of a type of journalism that we must continue to do: in good faith, with fairness and, of course, with tact towards those who are victims. The day the mother of one of these children told me that she doesn’t want this shoe to be shown, I would kneel in front of her and never show it again. But if, with all due respect, a senator of the Republic, or some slightly hired journalist, asks me, I prefer that he mind his own business”.
It’s not that, perhaps, a disorder of journalists would be better, what do you say?
“I agree, also because I’ve been in favor of abolishing the order of journalists for a lifetime. I’m not saying it now and only because they take it out on me! I will defend myself within the order, with respect. We’ll have a battle within the order and see what these gentlemen decide. I don’t worry too much, because I know how to explain the reasons for what we did. This is an important battle. Indeed, I think it is good that the knots come to a head on such important issues”.
Images are powerful. In 2015 the image of a child lying lifeless on a beach from Syria became a symbol that shook consciences. Those who challenge you know that the power of these images can change the great direction of public opinion. The slipper is much less brutal than the body, it doesn’t show death, but its effect. It’s a more elegant image, but it creates strong emotion.
“That child who died on the Bodrum beach was called Alan Kurdi and he had escaped from Kobanê. Angela Merkel opened the door to a million Syrians after that photograph shook all of Europe. That photo triggered a political initiative. I believe that today, after that little shoe, but in general after this massacre, after the very beautiful and very strong story that has been given by many colleagues of this massacre, it will be more difficult for the Government to continue along a political line of pure denial of the political asylum. These dead could be spared. Let’s hope that no more others will follow ”.
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