ANSA crime beat journalist Lara
Sirignano, who scooped the arrest of Mafia super fugitive Matteo
Messina Denaro in January last year, on Tuesday received the
25th annual Mario Francese Prize for crime reporting, named
after a Sicilian journalist assassinated by Cosa Nostra in 1979.
The citation read: "for having interpreted crime reporting with
a method that combines precision, independence, tinmeliness and
civic commitment".
Addressing students present, Sirignano described the growing
difficulties of reporting on crime in Italy: "access to judicial
documents is being increasingly hampered, and limits are being
set on magistrates and also journalists, behind the alibi of
sacrosanct values, such as presumption of innocence, which
however cannot be safeguarded by watered-down information".
Mario Francese was a crime reporter for the Giornale di Sicilia.
He was the first journalist to expose the role of Toto 'the
Beast' Riina and the Corleonesi within the Sicilian Mafia, and
because of this he was killed on 26 January 1979.
After 22 years, in 2001, those who had decided to eliminate him
were convicted.
Messina Denaro, one of the late Riina's main heirs and the last
godfather, died of cancer in a prison hospital in September.
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