Dear friends of the Done,
this Christmas is the twelfth that we celebrate together. And no doubt it is the most difficult, indeed dramatic. We could never have imagined, a year ago, what happened in this cursed 2020 and which still forces us to semi-enclosure waiting for San Vaccino. The Covid-19 it put us all to the test, a very hard test, as people, as citizens, as journalists, as readers. And that test, never forgetting for a single minute the mourning of 70 thousand families Italian, we can say that we have overcome it. So much so that we look forward to 2021 full of hopes for a Liberation, a Post-War and a Reconstruction that will not bring us back to the old vices of before, but allow us to change things for the better. As individuals. As a nation. And, in our small way, as a newspaper and as a multimedia group that unites the newspaper, the website, the publishing house Paper First, the monthly Fq Millennium and the platform TvLoft.
The virus has monopolized almost all of our attention and energy, forcing us to reconvert, inform and update ourselves in a very short time on fronts unknown to us such as medicine, virology, epidemiology, genetics, to offer our readers, internet users and viewers information that is up to the new challenges. Your answer was a tremendous reward for our efforts. The fact “Paper” (but also with its new offer of daily online newsletters) has earned thousands of copies on newsstands, digitally and by subscription, winning new signatures and new readers, in contrast with the trend of the publishing market, also thanks to ‘further concentration / approval of the other publishing groups. But mostly thanks to a new newspaper model, more compact, legible and exclusive, as well as graphically renewed starting from the end of May. The site has multiplied its unique users. TvLoft programs on the Nove – from Agreements & Disagreements a It is the Winds a The Confession to all the others – they obtained results close to those of the large generalist networks. The works of Paper First did boom at newsstands and in bookstores.
Perhaps never like this year “Il Fatto” in all its forms made an opinion and dictated its agenda, unmasking the media bubbles and lies – the “Lombardy model”, the differentiated autonomy of the Regions, the good governance of the center-right in the North, the balsamic effects of public funds on private healthcare, cuts to healthcare and ‘education, the urgency of an amnesty or a pardon or yet another empty-prisons against the alleged “Holocaust from Covid” in prisons, billions to businesses and the freedom to lay off to create jobs, the “competence” for science infused by the old parties and their “technicians” and so on – which the Covid emergency has miserably crumbled in the eyes first of a few and then of almost everyone.
As the rest of the information became homologated, passing from Single Thought for the Single Journal, the counterpoint of Done it was increasingly affirmed as a thorn in the side of those strong powers that count much more than the governments in office and that in fact have unleashed with unprecedented violence to overthrow the Count-2, not loyal enough to their orders and therefore anomalous and Martian, to return Italy to the old mangers. And to turn off one of the few surviving free voices in the world of information with blows complaints e quotes civilians for damage in the hope of shutting our mouths or at least reducing ourselves to milder advice. Suffice it to mention, among the many, the 18 lawsuits brought against us by the Unnameable for a total of 2 million euros; the tragicomic one of the president of the Senate Maria Elisabetta Alberti Casellati for 150 thousand euros; and those of Eni for the beauty of 5 million. Also in this case, our community reacted with affection and participation, with an avalanche of messages and letters of solidarity from hundreds of readers, ready to car ax or even and donate your severance pay to help us with the bad parade.
It is the confirmation of what we have been saying to each other since our birth certificate, on 23 September 2009: without the help and participation of great community of you readers, we would never make it. And it’s always nice to know that you have so many friends who care about the survival of the our free voice. A voice that will also be heard in 2021 to accompany the Liberation, the post-war period and the Reconstruction with proposals, stimuli and criticisms so that no one tries to imagine this new phase as a return to our worst past or as a fake and Gattopardesco change, as if the Covid emergency was just a parenthesis to close in order to fall back into the mistakes of before. We think it was instead a painful, mournful road test of what was wrong and a terrific opportunity to get rid of it forever: that’s enough public money for private healthcare, that’s enough conflicts of interest between politics, business, information and health, that’s enough cuts to essential public services such as hospitals, schools, research, culture and justice, that’s enough regional anarchy gabelled for autonomy and federalism, that’s enough with our health entrusted to the whims and interests of twenty mostly arrogant and incompetent “governors”.
In short, in this new phase we of the Done we will continue to fight for our principles against the conflicts of interest, the excessive power of the lobbies, the editorial concentrations, the impunity and privileges of the ruling classes, the social and fiscal inequities that condemn the poor and the honest to keep the rich and the thieves. In short: for the respect and full implementation of the Constitution republican, even at cost, to maintain its spirit and adapt its tools to changing times, to update it in some specific point.
As always, we have published a lot of facts that would never have come out without the Done. Some were “scoop”, that is news unearthed in preview by our good reporters. Others were facts known to all, but no one dared or wanted or could publish, giving us the exclusivity because of the conflicts of interest that continue to haunt the world of Italian information. Still others were hidden, unspoken, censored or fake truths from the lies of the big media, which we promptly debunked with our “fact checking”.
We were the first to point the finger on the responsibilities of the Lombardy Region in the failure to close in the red zone of They rise e Nembro in Val Seriana after the outbreak of the pandemic. We gave a voice to Dr. Attilio Galmozzi di Crema, the first Lombard doctor who dared to denounce the mismanagement of the pandemic in his region since 4 March. We were the first to describe those monuments to waste which are the “Bertolaso hospitals” at the Milan Fair and Civitanova Marche. We anticipated it scandalous contract entrusted by the Region led by Attilio Fontana to the firm of Fontana’s brother-in-law and wife. We have plumbed the “15 percent system” created by the League in the last twenty years to be paid by public managers divided into ASL, health departments, hospitals, banks and Rai. We found out in the investigation papers Consip the elements that led the investigating judge to order the “distracted” prosecutors to redo the investigations on Tiziano Renzi e Alfredo Romeo and to overturn the archiving request in request for indictment. We have unveiled some altars of the great cesspool of theEni and the other side of the coin of the “Palamara case”, which goes far beyond the responsibilities of a single “deviant” magistrate. We have reported, always in blissful solitude, the incredible inconsistencies of the trial a Virginia Raggi, then also acquitted on appeal. We revealed the second corruption investigation of the former Northern League undersecretary Armando Siri.
We have seen our historic battle for the electoral success reduction in the number of parliamentarians, which will continue into the new year to obtain a reduction in their salaries and an electoral law that will give us the power to choose our representatives in the Houses against blocked lists. We have given our small contribution to prevent the triumph (and “full powers”) of Salvini & C. in Emilia Romagna, Puglia e Tuscany. We won the battle for the government to finally institute handcuffs for the tax evaders and ousted i Benetton from the management of the Italian motorways after the shameful breaches of the concession on the Morandi bridge and the maintenance of arteries and viaducts. And so on. We have also made mistakes, as it is inevitable and human, by apologizing for them and rectifying them promptly, having no other masters that you readers.
We ask you readers, whenever you have ideas, advice, suggestions, remarks, criticisms and disagreements to report, to write to us: we will try to answer everyone and, as far as possible, to follow your instructions. No letter falls on deaf ears: compatibly with tyrant time, we respond privately to everyone and publish your most interesting contributions (for the daily column “Lo dico al Done”, Write us – possibly within 1500 characters – a letter a Daily fact, via di Sant’Erasmo 2, 00184 – Rome, or an email to the secretariat @ ilfattoquotidiano.it o a [email protected], indicating the name of the journalist you are addressing).
We say it every year and repeat it for the twelfth time: the war on informational abstention is important at least as much as that of electoral abstention. Help us to “attach” more and more people to reading the Done: continuing to purchase it everyday, not only occasionally, and, for those who already do it, by subscribing again this year or for the first time at Done and “presenting” it or giving it away to friends and acquaintances.
Without you, the fact it wouldn’t exist. But without the fact, many of you would be less informed. That is, less free.
Many thanks to all. And, on behalf of us and our editors, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year with Daily fact!
Marco Travaglio, Antonio Padellaro and Peter Gomez
