Ever since its foundation, Ossigeno per l’Informazione has promoted the theme of the memory of journalists killed because of their work with the aim of passing on their stories and drawing attention to the risks facing journalists who sought the truth yesterday and who seek it today.

THE MEMORY PLAQUE
Ossigeno per l’Informazione has mounted the faces and names of Italian journalists killed because of their work onto a large wall panel. The plaque is framed by the words “They were looking for the truth, 30 names, but one story”. Scrolling through the faces of the 30 journalists depicted, one is in effect scrolling through the events of an Italy marked by terrorism, by the fight against the organised crime syndicates, the mafia and the camorra, and by the wars beyond Italy in the 90s, up to the most recent conflicts in the Middle East.

The photos are those of the nine journalists killed by the mafia, the two killed by other terrorists, and the 19 killed during work missions abroad in war zones. The plaque was created on the occasion of the World Press Freedom Day on May 3 rd , declared by UNESCO, and celebrated every year in Rome by Ossigeno per l’Informazione. Since 2016, the plaque has been presented to the most senior Italian institutions, schools, universities, local authorities and trade unions. Since 2020, the 28 faces and 28 names already present have been supplemented by those of Fabio Polenghi, a photographer killed in Bangkok during a clash between the army and anti-government protesters, and Marcello Palmisano, a Rai journalist who died in Mogadishu.

The Plaque aims to keep alive, in the simplest and most expressive way, the memory of the journalists killed and their sacrifice. It also aims to make people understand that freedom of the press and of information are public goods, in the interest of citizens and, precisely for this reason, they have powerful enemies who try to suppress them unscrupulously, using violence even going so far as to take the life of those who report facts of public interest that disturb those in power.

THE JOURNALISTS KILLED
Cosimo Cristina, Mauro de Mauro, Giovanni Spampinato, Giuseppe Impastato, Mario Francese, Giuseppe Fava, Mauro Rostagno, Giuseppe Alfano, Giancarlo Siani, Carlo Casalegno, Walter Tobagi, Graziella De Palo, Italo Toni, Almerigo Grilz, Guido Puletti, Marco Luchetta with Alessandro Ota and Dario D’Angelo, Ilaria Alpi with Miran Hrovatin, Marcello Palmisano, Gabriel Gruener, Antonio Russo, Maria Grazia Cutuli, Raffaele Ciriello, Enzo Baldoni, Fabio Polenghi, Vittorio Arrigoni, Andrea Rocchelli and Simone Camilli.

They constitute thirty of our fellow professionals fallen in the cause of free information, killed by the mafia, by terrorism and by conflicts abroad.

Their stories are documented in the freely accessible online archive “Cercavano la verità”, compiled by Ossigeno per l’Informazione in May 2020 to make information easily accessible about each of them, about their lives, about their publications, about the labyrinthine paths of justice to identify and punish those responsible for their deaths.

“Cercavano la verità” is a tool at the service of collective memory so that the life and social conscience of those who sacrificed their lives to honour the right and the duty to inform are not lost over time. Although recounting thirty individual stories one by one, “Cercavano la verità” tells a single story: that of journalists united by an immense passion for journalism and by a civic commitment to the search for truth.

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