Background
Biagi was born in Lizzano in Belvedere, and began his career as a journalist in Bologna.
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Biagi was born in Lizzano in Belvedere, and began his career as a journalist in Bologna.
In 1952 he worked on the screenplay of the historical film Red Shirts. In 1953 he became the editor-in-chief of Epoca magazine. He worked on the Italian national television channel Rai Uno until 2001.
On 9 May 2001, just two days before the general elections in Italy, during his daily prime time 10-minute television show Il Fatto, broadcast on Rai Uno, Biagi interviewed the popular actor and director Roberto Benigni, who gave a hilarious talk about Silvio Berlusconi declaring his preference for the other candidate, Francesco Rutelli from the Olive Tree coalition.
Biagi disappeared from television screens a few months after Berlusconi"s declarations in Sofia named also Editto Bulgaro, where the then-Prime Minister accused the popular journalist, together with fellow journalist Michele Santoro and showman/comedian Daniele Luttazzi, of having made criminal use of the public television service. On 22 April 2007, 86-year-old Enzo Biagi made his television comeback on the Radiotelevisione Italiana with Reality Therapy - Rotocalco Televisivo, a current affairs show which is broadcast on Raitre.
At the opening of the show, he declared:
Good evening, sorry if I am a bit emotional, maybe it is visible. There has been a technical problem, and the break has lasted five years.
Until shortly before his death he was also a columnist for the daily Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, which he had worked for since the early 1970s.
Biagi"s defenders argue that a public service should provide pluralism, and that a country where government prevents opposing ideas from being voiced on air is a régime. The issue of Berlusconi"s motives for entering politics in the first place emerged in an interview that he gave with Biagi and Indro Montanelli, stating "If I don"t enter politics, I will go to jail and become bankrupt.".