Emilio Fede, the theatrical face of Tg4 between news, controversy and Berlusconi
Former director of Tg4 and historical face of Italian television, Emilio Fede has spanned over fifty years of television journalism
3' min read
3' min read
"Every morning I read the obituaries. If my name is not there, I go and shave my beard'. It was 2015 and Emilio Fede thus greeted those who had spoken in Rome for the presentation of his book "Se tornassi ad Arcore. Il bilancio di una vita da direttore". Born in 1931, the former director of Tg4 then offered a compendium of his life, starting from the events he witnessed during his long career, but without forgetting the human side of everything he experienced. Snapshots of his life, but also of the changing world. From his beginnings as a volunteer reporter to his entry into RAI and his arrival at Fininvest.
Emilio Fede has been, for forty years, the very embodiment of a certain way of doing television journalism: theatrical, capable of moving live and transforming the news into a personal narrative. With him, Tg4 was not just a news programme, but a stage on which Silvio Berlusconi's Italy was staged every night. That news programme, for Emilio Fede, was never just a news programme. It was a mirror. You watched it and saw both the country and its director: Italy filtered by a face, a voice, an arched eyebrow.
He began working for RAI in 1954. He was hired in 1961, beginning a career that would lead him (after eight years as a special envoy from Africa, accompanied by more than a pinprick of votes and expenses) to lead the 8 p.m. Tg1 from 1976 to 1981, when he became its director (1981-83). He left RAI to join Mediaset, first as director of Studio Aperto (the news programme of Italia 1), then at the head of Tg4 (from 1992).
The one with Mediaset (and with Silvio Berlusconi) would become the longest-lasting association in Italian commercial television. For almost twenty years, Fede opened and closed the Italians' days with his unmistakable mixture of news and opinions. He was considered the face of absolute loyalty to the Cavaliere, capable of defending him even when everyone attacked him. His live gaffes, slips of the tongue ('che figura di m...' remained proverbial), and his anger with technicians and collaborators were memorable. He was targeted by satire, Crozza made an irresistible caricature of him, but he never retreated: 'I am the director', he would proudly repeat.
His news programme was also a window on the country's recent history. The images of Tangentopoli, 9/11, the war in Iraq, the Cogne crime: Fede went through them with the same verve, often accused of a lack of impartiality, but always recognisable. And when he was moved live - by a tragedy, a collapse, a national mourning - it seemed that television suddenly became intimate.
