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From
the October 2001 issue of World Press Review
Indro Montanelli
Reporting the 20th Century
Tekla Szymanski
World Press Review Associate Editor
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| Indro
Montanelli in front of the Milan offices of Corriere della
Sera, where he began his career (Photo courtesy La
Republica) |
To
admirers and foes alike, he was the “voice of a witness, a master
of journalism, Italy’s Grand Old Man.” Indro Montanelli
died in July at the age of 92. “A wonder of vitality, he is the
most famous journalist of the 20th century,” wrote Dietmar Polaczek
in Frankfurt’s Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. Montanelli
received WPR’s International Editor of the Year Award
for 1994. Never shy of words, he wrote in his acceptance letter, “I
consider [this] award as something in between a Nobel and a Pulitzer.”
In 2000, he was among the “50 press freedom heroes of the past
50 years,” a list compiled by the International Press Institute.
Montanelli embraced many political leanings in his life: fascist and
admirer of Mussolini (who later persecuted him because Montanelli
wrote about the duce’s lover). He was ousted from the Fascist
Party after he criticized the conduct of Italian troops in the Spanish
Civil War. He was an anti-communist, conservative moralist, and icon
of the political right who became a vigorous opponent of Silvio Berlusconi.
And he was kneecapped by the Red Brigades in 1977 for his conservative
views.
Montanelli started his career in 1939 as war correspondent for Milan’s
Corriere della Sera, covering the Spanish Civil War. He reported
from Nazi Germany (and was the first foreign journalist to interview
Hitler), was detained in Milan, and was sentenced to death in 1943
for allegedly conspiring in Mussolini’s arrest. He escaped and
fled to Switzerland.
After the war he returned to Corriere and was the first foreign
journalist in Budapest to cover the 1956 Hungarian uprising. He left
Corriere when he thought it was moving too far to the left,
and in 1974 he founded Milan’s Il Giornale.
Montanelli was a friend of Italy’s Prime Minister Berlusconi
before the media mogul turned to politics. Berlusconi, the owner of
Il Giornale, reportedly sobbed at Montanelli’s hospital
bedside after the Red Brigades’ attack, but the relationship
turned sour when Berlusconi entered politics and asked Montanelli,
who was the editor of Il Giornale, to endorse Berlusconi’s
run for prime minister. Montanelli refused to become a mouthpiece
for Berlusconi’s party and resigned from the editorship.
In 1994, Montanelli launched the daily La Voce, which
folded after a year, not without shaping the political discourse
in the country. Montanelli proved to be Berlusconi’s most
vociferous—and often lone—opponent. Our lives as journalists
are as transient as butterflies,” Montanelli once said.
“His,” wrote Nello Ajello in Rome’s La Repubblica,
“was a lifelong fight of an Italian with his country.” 
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