Franco Di Mare returned to TV after some time to talk about the dramatic health situation due to mesothelioma, a serious form of cancer linked to exposure to the toxic substance of asbestos. “As a war correspondent I breathed asbestos: I am calm and I don’t give up, but you can’t heal from this”, he told Fabio Fazio in the program What’s the weather like going into the details of a story that shocked the public also due to the heavy statements about the behavior that Rai reserved for him after the discovery of the disease.
The unanswered emails and the formal notice to Rai: Franco di Mare’s battle
The 68-year-old journalist confided that he had little to live and linked his illness to the many reports he had as a war correspondent, especially in the former Yugoslavia: “You get it because you breathe in asbestos particles without realizing it: an asbestos fiber is 6,000 times more as small and light as a hair, once released into the air it no longer settles on the ground, one breathes it without realizing it.” In the professional life of the Neapolitan journalist, in fact, there is a long list of places where he was sent for RAI.
Inail has published a note on the journalist’s case, following some “inaccuracies” published in recent days. The institute explained that it is not blocking Franco Di Mare’s practice but that it is not “legitimized to ascertain the causal link between the profession carried out by the journalist and the pathology he contracted nor to issue a certification attesting or not to this correlation” .
The career of Franco Di Mare
Franco Di Mare has been a professional journalist since 1983. In 1980 he began working at l’Unità as a judicial reporter. The following year he began to collaborate as a correspondent from Naples also for the service agency AGA (Associated Newspaper Agency) and for Radiocor (Economic and Financial Press Agency). In 1991 he joined Rai, in the foreign editorial office of Tg2 where in 1995 he assumed the role of special correspondent, dealing with the Balkan War and also covering the main areas of Africa and Central America. In 2002 he moved to Tg1, covering most of the conflicts of the last twenty years: Bosnia, Kosovo, Somalia, Mozambique, Algeria, Albania, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Rwanda, the first and second Gulf wars, Afghanistan, East Timor, the Middle East and America Latin. Furthermore, as a correspondent he covered the failed coups in Latin America, the presidential election campaigns of the United States, France, Bulgaria and Algeria.
Also very active in terms of reportages (he has made several from areas affected by natural disasters such as Honduras, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Alabama, India, Anatolia and Louisiana) Di Mare is also the author of reports and documentaries on national (Sicily, Campania, Calabria and Puglia) and international (Germany, Russia and Bulgaria) organized crime and has written investigations and reports after terrorist attacks in Japan, Russia, Kenya, Egypt, the United States and the Middle East.
Rai programs
In 2003 Franco Di Mare became host of Rai 1 for Unomattina Estate, Uno Mattina weekend and then from 2004 for Uno Mattina. From 2005 to 2009 he was at the helm of Sabato e Domenica, always on Rai 1, and since 2005 he has been the author of the Tg1 windows within Uno Mattina, an activity which he also covers for the 2010-2011 season. In July 2019 he was promoted to new deputy director of Rai 1 with responsibility for in-depth analysis and investigations and in 2020 general director of Rai daytime programmes. On 15 May 2020 he took over the direction of Rai 3. On 19 June, 40 years after the Ustica massacre, he hosted the special Flight Itavia 870 on Rai 3.
The private life of Franco Di Mare
Interviewed by Corriere della Sera, Franco Di Mare also spoke about how in this moment marked by the illness, the presence of his dearest loved ones is crucial in dealing with the situation. “I am with the people I love. My dear sisters. I am protected and looked after, I feel like a little sultan. We always fixate on our first love – mine, in high school, was a dancer at San Carlo – but the most important is the “The last one, who accompanies you in the final steps, is Giulia. We have been together for eight years, there are more than 30 years of difference, before it was less noticeable”, he confided. His partner is Giulia Berdini, head of catering services at Rai with whom he has been engaged since 2017, some time after the end of his marriage to Alessandra Di Mare. With his ex-wife Franco Di Mare he adopted a little girl, Stella, whom he met in an orphanage in Sarajevo where she was documenting the conflict in Bosnia. “You are not the journalist who saves the little girl from a dark fate. But you are the little girl who saves the journalist’s life” Franco Di Mare commented in an interview given a few years ago to Christian family. His experience as a parent is told in the book Don’t ask why which inspired The Angel of Sarajevo, a two-part miniseries starring Beppe Fiorello.
The first meeting and love for the daughter
“Among many blond children I noticed one with dark hair, she was also the only one who smiled. I picked her up, she clung to my neck and that was the beginning of a great story”, so Franco Di Mare, in 2019 a Solar time, described first meeting her daughter, Stella, in the Sarajevo orphanage.
It was the summer of 1992, “I went because he had been hit by a grenade. It was lucky that only two were injured.” Stella was just over 10 months old, the two together boarded a Red Cross flight to Italy and then adopted her. TO Christian family revealed: “It wasn’t an act of heroism: I fell in love with a newborn baby, we chose each other a bit. I don’t feel generous, I did everything to take her away from Sarajevo but in reality I didn’t save anyone. She, rather, he saved me.” Today Stella is 32 years old, has a degree in Economics and nothing else is known about her. She only accompanied her father in some public events. Stella together with her aunts, Franco’s sisters, and Berdini are the people closest to the journalist at this moment in her life.
Franco Di Mare on Instagram
Neither Franco di Mare nor his daughter have a social profile, at least not with their name. The journalist’s partner, Giulia Berdini, yes. There are no photos or videos in which Di Mare can be clearly seen, but it happens to be glimpsed in the contents she shares. For example, in the penultimate video published, dating back to 30 July 2022, Di Mare can be seen while he is sitting at a table in what appears to be a resort surrounded by nature. But Giulia chose a shot with her partner as her profile picture.
