Giuseppe
Fava
“Sometimes, omitting just a single piece of news is enough for a financial empire to grow by ten billion;
or for a sinister figure who should disappear to remain in the spotlight;
or for a scandal on the verge of erupting to be dragged back down into the depths. ”
Giuseppe Fava had an extraordinary artistic, literary, and painterly vocation. He was born in Palazzolo Acreide, in the province of Syracuse, on September 15, 1925. After earning a degree in Law, he chose to become a journalist, a profession he carried out mainly in Catania. At the same time, Giuseppe also wrote books, some of which were adapted into films: The Respectable People (Gente di rispetto) by Luigi Zampa; Palermo oder Wolfsburg, which won the Golden Bear at the 1980 Berlin Film Festival, by Werner Schroeter. These works established the Sicilian writer as a profound scholar of the Sicilian mafia phenomenon.
In 1980, he was appointed editor-in-chief of Il Giornale del Sud. The editorial concept had developed within the entrepreneurial, political, and journalistic circles of the city. The newspaper spoke openly about the building speculation and the mafia's invasion. Fava and Il Giornale del Sud became a threat: first came censorship, then threats, followed by attacks, and finally, dismissal. A few months after Fava's fallout with the publisher, the newspaper ceased publication.
In 1982, Giuseppe Fava, together with part of the editorial team from Il Giornale del Sud who had shared his core values, founded the publishing cooperative Radar and registered a new publication: I Siciliani. With that monthly magazine, Fava chose to tell the story of environmental devastation, the nuclear trap in Comiso, and the challenge posed by the mafia. I Siciliani became a newspaper of investigative journalism across all areas of society, offering critical insights into a Southern Italian reality that, for better or worse, belonged to all Italians.
He was silenced with five bullets on the evening of January 5, 1984, at 9:30 p.m.
video Insights
Accas film
Giuseppe FAVA intervistato da
Enzo Biagi (1983)
