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Italian shop-keepers, businessmen and judges are not the only victims of organised crime networks such as Cosa Nostra, the Camorra, the ’Ndrangheta, and the Sacra Corona Unita. Journalists and writers also find themselves in the line of fire as soon as they try to cover the Italian mafia. One of them is Roberto Saviano, author of the book Gomorra, who is forced to live under permanent police protection.
In all, some 10 journalists work under police protection. There have been hundreds of cases of threats, anonymous letters, vandalised tyres, and torched cars. Every journalist writing about these criminal groups has been watched at one time or another. Lirio Abbate, 38, correspondent in Palermo, Sicily, for the news agency Ansa, and author of I Complici (The Accomplices), also lives under permanent police protection. This is also the case, since March 2008, for Rosaria Capacchione, a 48-year-old journalist working for more than 20 years for the leading Naples daily Il Mattino, who covers the Camorra and who, like Roberto Saviano, is being hunted by the Casalesi clan. And their work, with all the risks that accompany it, gets no support from Prime Minister Silvia Berlusconi. In November 2009, he said he wanted to “strangle” writers and filmmakers who give Italy a bad image by focusing on the mafia.
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