Ho known Alfredo Recanatesi in the early 70s. I had entered the editorial staff of the The Globe, a glorious economic daily newspaper published in Rome. He was already responsible for the Stock Exchange and Finance section. my first job was to copy the stock market price list day after day onto special sheets of paper which were then sent to the printers. manual work, now replaced by machines, but which allowed young people to learn by heart the names of listed companies and see the daily fluctuations of their prices. Then they did a bit of everything editorial workHeadlines, rewriting of news items, news of various sizes. Above all, the news items were glued together to create pieces of the desired length. It's no coincidence that, upon entering the newsroom, the supplies assigned to a young aspiring journalist consisted of a pair of scissors and a jar of glue, the famous Coccoina.
I the rhythms of journalism at the time were differentAt that time the director of Il Globo was Remigio Rispo an elderly Neapolitan gentleman always in a double-breasted suit, who around six in the afternoon would return home, stopping by the editorial office to say hello and leave a peremptory warning: “Ue' guaglio' faciteme 'nu bello giornale”.
After just over a year Recanatesi was called to direct the Roman editorial office of the Only 24 hours, the largest daily newspaper and already the national leader. A few months later he called me offering me a position in the Finance sector, but in Milan. We started there, together with the director Alberto Mucci, great journalistic adventure which consisted in transforming the newspaper, which was little more than a bulletin with stock market and commodity prices, into a real newspaper. We spoke every day, and perhaps several times a day to compare our ideas and agree on proposals to make to the director and the rest of the editorial staff.
We should have won the strong resistance from traditionalists who didn't want to abandon the old paths they'd been following for almost a hundred years. "It's always been done this way," they said. We fought to give the pieces merit titles. For example, previously, the title was "The Montedison Assembly," while we managed to get them to use a merit title like "Montedison Loses a Tot" or "The Board of Directors Changes." A small issue that, however, ushered in a new journalistic mentality. As Lawyer Agnelli told us, then president of Confindustria, we should not have done a house organ of the confederation of industrialists, but a big newspaper for the entire Italian economy. Certainly of liberal and pro-market inspiration. But free to judge individual operations or government policies on the basis of a well-motivated technical judgment, always framed within the underlying liberal inspiration.
Recanatesi wrote predominantly of economic and monetary policy, but he did not disdain forays into pure politics as when he scolded Ugo La Malfa For not having the courage to form a government that marginalized the DC. And in his field, he was number one. But not being tied to any bandwagon doesn't arouse much sympathy. Those on your side don't trust you, while your opponents are increasing their attacks.
Along the road to independence it is essential that a newspaper that wants to be read by several people, even with different political opinions and ideological options, you buy credibility and reliabilityThe public must know that behind what is written there is only one accurate journalistic work. In this direction, at a certain point we pressed the director to publish a daily page dedicated to the labor and union issuesAll hell broke loose! The more conservative industrialists criticized this initiative by what they considered "their" newspaper. The page was kept, but certainly that episode... distrust towards Recanatesi increased and the director himself. After all, almost twenty years later, one of the reasons why I was removed from management de Il Sole 24 Ore , (the president of Confindustria was Antonio d'Amato) was precisely that of having published on the front page an article by Sergio Cofferati, then general secretary of the Cgil, which he replied moreover to a our severe criticism of the union who only knew how to say NO. A bit like what still happens today. This proves the truth of the saying "the mother of fools is always pregnant."
Presto the adventure ended first for me and then for him too de Il Sole 24 Ore I then returned as director and CEO. He became a columnist for the print and collaborated with various institutions including the ABI. Alfredo Recanatesi was a witness to what it means to be an independent journalist, not aligned a priori and not a militant for a party or a power group. He certainly had his ideas, and they were close to those of a reasonable and prepared left. A left that unfortunately did not exist (with a few exceptions) and does not exist. Journalism should not be used to lobby or influence votersJournalists should not write or appear on TV under their political label, participating in the squabbling of (mostly uninformed) opinions, but present themselves based on their expertise and their ability to communicate to the reader or listener something that is as close as possible to the reality of the facts.
Il citizen must have confidence on the fact that the journalist scrupulously carried out the necessary checks before communicating information. credibility of information today is compromised (with a few rare exceptions) because journalists appear as spokespeople for a particular position, rather than as "guardians of power." And this is perhaps also one reason for the decline of our democracies.
READ MORE: Recanatesi's thoughts on Italian-made journalism
