“Restoring memory to news makes them less orphaned.”
A hymn to the common good, to always acting thinking that every single choice in our daily life can have a positive impact on the community. Being honest with ourselves before others, acting based on what was once called common sense. Well, if we had to describe the book in a few words, they could only be these.
In a double-track story, Sigfrido Ranucci offers us key episodes of his personal life and his professional life, and how the events merged during some major journalistic investigations that took him far from home for a long time.
A job experienced as a mission, for which he was willing to sacrifice important aspects of family life, such as not having seen his children grow up in their daily lives, or being placed under escort due to the risk of attacks following his work. A very high price to pay, with a courage that few would have had, and we have to ask ourselves, if he was willing to not compromise to get to the truth of the facts, what is the price that we are willing to pay to have a free press? After all, having information that is not the victim of aggression or intimidation, isn’t it perhaps the best investment in our future when we go to vote, when we have to get treatment, when we go shopping, and so on?
The writing is clean, in line with the author’s profession; even when he tells episodes of private life, digging into the memories of parents, or children who were once children, the story is fortunately free of superfluous hyperbole. What should be appreciated, however, is not the stylistic choice adopted, but rather the historical reconstruction of some events that have marked the history of the world (such as the US admission of white phosphorus during the war in Iraq, which brought Italian public television to the top of world journalism), or Italian.
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Sigfrido Ranucci, La scelta, Bompiani, Milano, 2024