by Gaetano Savatteri
Is journalism still able to represent reality? The question arrives in Europe from the United States, where the New York Times laid it out in black and white the day after Donald Trump’s victory. The most famous newspaper in the world actually admitted it had done its job all wrong, and simply hadn’t seen it coming: the anti-establishment sentiment, that is, in the American heartland.
A defeat for the media then, or so it would appear. Journalism doesn’t seem to possess the toolbox for reading the signals. And unless we want to say that reality is what’s wrong, it means that narrative journalism is often not up to the job.
It’s hardly surprising, therefore, that many journalists seek other ways to recount reality: the stage, film or TV series. Or non-fiction novels, with their real-life elements made to fit in a fictional narrative framework. What Truman Capote knew as ‘New Journalism’ - when journalism could still be conceived as being freed from its conventions yet still equipped to penetrate and delve into the real world - now seems to spill over into the novel’s terrain: sheer invention, in the space between real and fake, truth and probability. If news itself seems weakened, fictionalizing that news has become a powerful tool even more suited to revealing the unknowable. Which is just why Roberto Saviano’s Gomorrah attracted criticism - though it’s also the secret to the success and fascination of that book.
Is this, then, the future of journalism, or its involution? Does the (frequently) noir novel written by a reporter using his knowledge of the streets, succeed in better portraying the background to a crime, the missing links and connections and collusion with power than a news story would? Does violence, which the media make seem almost banal, reemerge in a novel with all its multiple aspects and social and psychological repercussions intact?
Many questions, all of them open-ended. Is a journalist a novelist manqué or a genuine author whose reasons for writing are rooted in the real? And what about the pact he or she makes with readers: does it differ according to the form selected for the story? Not to mention the literary lights commissioned by newspapers to write news reports, while reporters metamorphose into writers. Perhaps this overlapping between kinds of writing represents the future of storytelling about reality, as the border between real and false becomes more and more blurred and ephemeral.
Speakers
Carlo Bonini, special correspondent for "La Repubblica" and co-author (with G. De Cataldo) of La notte di Roma (Einaudi, 2015) and Il corpo del reato (Feltrinelli, 2016).
Piero Colaprico, special correspondent for "La Repubblica" and co-author (with Pietro Valpreda) of Le indagini del maresciallo Binda (Feltrinelli, 2013).
Gianluca Ferraris, senior editor of "Donna Moderna" and author of Piombo su Milano (Novecento, 2016)
Carlo Lucarelli, novelist, reporter, film director and radio and TV host, author of Intrigo italiano (Einaudi, 2017)
