Italian investigative journalist Paolo Borrometi has been under armed protection for the last five years—and for good reason. In 2014, the mafia attacked him and tore his shoulder muscles in three places, leaving him with permanent damage. Then they set fire to his family’s house in Modica. They have threatened him numerous times: one mafia member in Ragusa threatened to place Borrometi’s heart in a pan and eat it. And in April of 2018, police caught a conversation on wiretap between members of a well-known mafia clan who were plotting to kill Borrometi.
Yet none of this stops Borrometi. This year, he was the recipient of the Peter Mackler Award, which is given to journalists who report in countries where freedom of the press is endangered. Borrometi received the award, which is named after the late foreign correspondent and journalist Peter Mackler, at the Newmark School of Journalism at CUNY on September 25.
On his website, La Spia (“The Spy”), founded in 2013, the Sicilian journalist exposes the workings of the Syracuse and Ragusa branches of the famous Sicilian mafia Cosa Nostra. He publishes information based on documents and the words of pentiti, or mafia men who break the code of silence. He has reported on mafia activities in the food processing industry, and he also writes about incompetence in the Italian health care system and problems with state institutions. Many of his articles talk about children who have become sick or died because of poor medical care. In April, he wrote an article exposing the truth about a UNESCO gala in Sicily, which was organized by a notorious mafia boss.
In his acceptance speech for the award, Borrometi named activist and radio journalist Peppino Impastato from Palermo as one of his heroes. The mafia murdered Impastato in 1978 after he denounced a clan boss who lived and operated in the area. Borrometi dedicated the award to several journalists who lost their lives while reporting. He was close friends with Daphne Caruana Galizia, the Maltese journalist killed in a car bomb in 2016, and he dedicated the award to her, as well as to Italian journalist Antonio Megalizzi, who was killed in a shooting in Strasbourg while reporting on the European Parliament.
Borrometi’s first personal encounter with the mafia happened when he was about 10 years old. In his 2018 book, Every Once in a While Somebody Dies, Borrometi recounts how his father, who was a local politician, refused to engage in corruption. Consequently, Borrometi’s house was robbed, and a mysterious car began following him as he walked through the neighborhood. These events terrified him, and he developed a stutter. It wasn’t until years later that Borrometi discovered that the man following him was a Sicilian mafioso.
Borrometi grew up during the years when tensions between the Italian state and the Sicilian mafia were boiling over. He was driven toward journalism after the 1992 massacres of Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, the two judges who presided over the Maxi trial, a famous case in the 1980s that sent 360 mafia members to prison. He has written about some of the most notorious mafia bosses in recent history, including Salvatore “Toto” Riina, who led the assassinations against Falcone and Borsellino, and Bernardo Provenzano, who hid from the police for 40 years before finally being captured in 2006.
He graduated college with a degree in law and started working as a journalist in 2010, collaborating with various sites such as La Repubblica, Il Giornale di Sicilia, and UnaVoce. Today, he works with the Italian Roman-Catholic network TV2000 and with the Italian news agency Agi, where he was recently named vice-president.
Borrometi called the Mackler award the “crowning of a dream,” rivalled only by the time in 2015 when he was named Cavaliere dell’Ordine al merito della Repubblica italiana,—-the Italian equivalent of knighthood.
Borrometi is one of over 200 journalists in Italy who live under police protection because of threats from the mafia. When he speaks at high schools, Borrometi said, the students often ask him if he has given up his freedom. He replies that, although living under armed guard means that he has given up some independence, he receives a greater freedom: the ability to speak the truth.
After Borrometi accepted his award, Ian Fisher, editor at Bloomberg, moderated a discussion on how to confront situations in which journalists are put in danger. He was joined by Susan Chira of the Marshall Project, Courtney C. Radsch of the Committee to Protect Journalists and Andrew Rosati, a Knight Fellow at Columbia University.
They talked about the risk of sending journalists into dangerous places at a time when many people have hostile attitudes toward the media. There is no longer guaranteed government support for reporters who are jailed or injured, and editors are forced to choose between the story’s importance and the well-being of the journalist. Lack of public confidence in the press feeds this general apathy toward journalists in danger. They also discussed the necessity of protecting local journalists like Borrometi, who are often in far more danger than Western foreign correspondents.
Borrometi said he didn’t know if he would ever have a family, or children. For now, his plans are to continue reporting and holding those in power accountable; in other words, following his lifelong dream.
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