“Today I lose a precious collaborator”. The Minister of Agriculture Francesco Lollobrigida wrote this on Facebook, commenting on Paolo Signorelli’s resignation in a post entitled “Hatred, the pen and the pencil”. Lollobrigida describes Signorelli, “as I knew him” as a “clean record” professional with two degrees who “works with dedication and professionalism. In recent months I have never heard him say something out of line. His journalist colleagues have always spoken well of him and, perhaps now only privately, continue to do so.”
Lollobrigida on Facebook: “Paolo Signorelli, as I knew him, is a family man who loves his wife and his children. He has a clean criminal record and has two degrees. He works with dedication and professionalism. In recent months I have never heard him say something out of line. His journalist colleagues have always spoken well of him and, perhaps now only privately, continue to do so. Certainly the things I read in the chats are unjustifiable but the context in which they were said is much more complex than how it was told. However, it is his past which appears, to those who know the Paolo of today, much further away than just the years that separate him from what was reported in the newspaper on the day of the closing of the electoral campaign. You can find yourself in terrible situations without knowing it or wanting it due to the context in which you grew up or work. Especially if another Paolo Signorelli is your grandfather and you certainly couldn’t choose him….
However, it should be important not to have committed crimes and to have had the courage to move on. But that’s not always the case.
A newspaper has published interceptions that have no criminal relevance except, possibly, for those who disseminated them. As L’Unità also wrote well.
De Benedetti’s newspaper, however, reported a different person than a young journalist who for years has not missed a Sunday in church, regularly goes on pilgrimage to Medjugorje, helps anyone in difficulty. Paolo resigned, so as not to further feed the meat grinder into which he had ended up. Even in the chats at his children’s school… because it is clear that through him they wanted to attack the Government… because the serenity of his family is not expendable.
He was an excellent press officer and will be greatly missed by his current colleagues.
I thank those who had the clarity of mind not to be exploited by those who pulled them by the jacket between one demonstration and another of hatred against Israel. Everyone knows well that anti-Semites must stay away from the Brothers of Italy.
Or by Lotta Continua journalists who defined us as “a nation of pigs”. Who knows if WhatsApp had existed in the seventies what they would have found in their private chats to accompany the hatred that characterized their public writings…
Or from the programs that host the nostalgics of the Red Brigades who killed Moro.
With great respect for those who felt affected by Signorelli’s statements in private chats but much less for those who exploited them, I would say, from the electoral data, that these journalistic attacks do not lead to the result hoped for by those who plan them.
I have always chosen press offices without looking at political affiliation, as Vincenzo Bisbiglia, editor of “Il Fatto” who worked for me for two years, could testify.
Today I lose a precious collaborator…
We move forward with the same serenity as always.”
 and takes it out on Repubblica, “De Benedetti’s newspaper”){kind=link}