Il racconto degli anni di piombo sulla stampa quotidiana nazionale (1996-2010)

The recollection of the political violence experienced by Italy during the so-called «Years of Lead» is still highly controversial and unsettled. The mainstream media account of this period is considered as one of the main sources of such «pathology of the memory». Specifically, the treatment of this sensitive topic by Italian newspapers has been labeled as superficial, ideologically biased, and selective in the choice of testimonies (obliterating the victims’ point of view). This research aims at verifying these assumptions. To fully address this question, I follow two main criteria. First, I employ a data set drawn from the digital archives of the two most widespread Italian daily newspapers: Corriere della Sera and la Repubblica. Second, I adopt a wide temporal window encompassing the fifteen years period between 1996 and 2010. This time frame allows a longitudinal analysis and offers a distant perspective from the 1970s to scrutinize the rehash of the memory of those years. Based on extensive qualitative and quantitative evidence, I propose that the two newspapers – contrary to the conventional beliefs – gave a fairly accurate, balanced and contextualized account of the «years of lead». Moreover, I demonstrate that victims’ voices and memoirs have been systematically underrepresented until 2006, while far-left militants’ testimonies and judicial issues have received much wider attention. A graphic rendering of this asymmetry is also provided. In conclusion, I suggest that the newspaper accounts after 2006 have improved the neutrality and the plurality of their historical reconstructions, by reflecting president Giorgio Napolitano’s reconciliation policies.