Grazie Antonio, Dziękuję Barto
Following a terrorism act in Strasbourg last week, Alumna and Italian journalist Anna Ferrari reflects on the shared identity many journalists covering the European Union have. "I will keep your reporting dreams alive," Anna writes in tribute to the two journalists killed in the attack, Antonio Megalizzi and Barto Pedro Orent-Niedzielski.
"Antonio Megalizzi. 29 years old. A young journalist. Wanted to report on the EU for the citizens. He was hit by a bullet during the Strasbourg shooting this week and died on Friday. The funeral has just been. His friend and colleague Barto Pedro Orent-Niedzielski, also a young journalist, was killed too.
So many Mundusians end up in the Brussels Bubble, or in Strasbourg, reporting on the EU. Last week, it could have been one of us, too...
Grazie Antonio, Dziękuję Barto, I didn't know either of you, but I think we might have been friends. Your dream is mine. I take it with me to keep it going, if you will.
So many of us have the same dream to be journalists and report on politics. To report on the EU. So many of us have worked on or are currently working in and around the EU institutions and so many of us know Brussels, Strasbourg and its Christmas market. Many of us consider it a responsibility, an honour to be working as a journalist, despite the difficult situation of working in journalism nowadays, and particularly on the EU subject.
Many of us embrace this work as a personal story: this is the way we contribute to something we believe in, while doing the job we love. Sometimes you can feel, in your own way, like a fighter for a good cause: explaining the EU to its citizens, helping them to understand and feel it closer.
But even so, even if you are ready to receive the bullets of criticism and sometime deal with the delusional steps of the EU itself, this should not cost a single life. What is this terrorism that thinks it is entitled to take others' lives?
It is not and never will be.
Grazie Antonio, Dziękuję Barto, I didn't know either of you, but I think we might have been friends. Your dream is mine. I take it with me to keep it going, if you will."