OBITUARY: Veteran Italian journalist Biagi dies

Nov 6, 2007, 10:04 GMT

Milan - Veteran Italian journalist Enzo Biagi, who lost his job with Italy's state television following a controversial call for his dismissal by then prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, has died. He was 87.

Biagi, who had been ill for some time, died Tuesday morning in a Milan clinic, according to doctors and family members.

'A great voice for freedom disappears with Enzo Biagi,' Italian President Giorgio Napolitano said in a statement.

Known for his caustic wit, Biagi was born in 1920 in Lizzano in Belvedere near Bologna, the city where he began his six-decades-long journalistic career, mainly in newspapers and later television.

Just days before Italy's April 2001 general election Biagi hosted on television Oscar-winning comedian Roberto Benigni who in a spoof interview presented, laced with satire, a list of reasons why voters should choose conservative candidate Silvio Berlusconi.

Berlusconi and his allies saw no humour in Benigni's performance and accused Biagi of using Il Fatto, the prime-time programme the journalist presented on state television's Rai Uno channel, as a propaganda tool for centre-left candidate Francesco Rutelli.

Berlusconi won the election and in April 2002 during an official visit to Bulgaria issued what in Italy his foes branded the 'Bulgarian edict,' a demand for the removal from state television of Biagi and two other television personalities, talk-show host Michele Santoro and comedian Daniele Luttazzi.

Biagi, Santoro and Luttazzi had made a 'criminal use' of public broadcaster Rai, said Berlusconi, owner of Italy's three largest private television channels and embroiled at the time in a conflict of interest controversy over his government's control of Rai.

Biagi's programme was axed from the Rai schedule, and in recent years the journalist mostly worked as a newspaper columnist, including for Italy's most respected daily, Corriere della Sera.

'He was a great journalist and at the same time like an affectionate father always eager to help young journalists,' Corriere della Sera editor Paolo Mieli said Tuesday.

Biagi is survived by two daughters Carla and Bice.

Funeral arrangement were not immediately available.