Il telegiornale

So with what we have all been seeing in the news lately that is pretty close to home (both Italy and Seattle) I thought I should write a little something. First a word about the Italian media: Luciana, my host mom (or host Nonna as she says), watches the news every night while we eat dinner. We have no choice but to watch with her. I am not against watching the news or being informed, in fact I think it is important that I stay informed about current events while I am here. However, if I had a choice I would not watch this during dinner, for many reasons.

First, the Italian news is not like American news, they don’t tell you about something terrible that happened, they tell you about something terrible that happened, show you the body, show you the blood stain the body left on the street and then show you footage of the person’s mother/father/girlfriend/sister etc. seeing the body. It is terrible and very upsetting to watch whether you understand what they are saying or not. They do it to get a rise out of people, and it works. Luciana eats half as quickly as we do because she spends all of dinnertime screaming “Bastardi!” “Creatini!” or “Idioti!” at every politician, famous person, or criminal suspect on the screen.

Second, the Italian media really likes to take stories like this one about the student killed in Perugia and cling to it as if there is nothing else going on in the world. This isn’t so different I guess from American media tactics but I feel as if they choose more personal stories to do this with, for instance a couple weeks after this happened a young man was killed in a car accident of some kind and people are now blaming the police for not acting quickly enough or something and now his face, his blog, pictures of him, his friends, his family are the only things on the tv. The newspaper even printed the sequence of events at his funeral, I don’t really understand why this one person was made such a public figure, but he has been, just like the people involved in the Perugia murder.

Though what happened in Perugia was tragic and scary I definitely don’t feel in any kind of danger. I obviously have no more of an idea than anyone else who really killed that girl, however I firmly believe lots of drugs and alcohol were involved and terrible decisions were made about the kind of company she was keeping. There are literally thousands of students who study in Italy every year and the only reason this is big news is because it is rare. I feel safe in Florence because I stay safe in Florence, I know there is crime here and I probably live in one of the worse areas (near the train station) for it, but common sense helps a lot and staying aware and with someone, especially at night makes all the difference. Luciana always asks us at dinner if we are going out that night, if we say yes she tells us, “Va bene, esca presto, ritorna presto. È meglio così.” “That’s good, leave early, come back early. It’s better that way.”