Lirio Abbate

Lirio Abbate is a professional journalist. Since 2007 he lives under escort because of repetead death treaths from the mafia. Since 1990 he has been working for the Giornale di Sicilia and for the press agency Ansa in Palermo newsroom. Currently, he is reporter for the weekly L’Espresso. In 2006 he was the only journalist attending the arrest of the mafia boss Bernardo Provenzano. Abbate received several awards for his inquiries. In 2015 the London association Index on Censorship inserted him among the 17 people in the world struggling for press freedom. He is one of 100 heroes named by Reporters Sans Frontieres. He is a founding member and first observer of Ossigeno per l’Informazione.

Federica Angeli

Federica Angeli is a journalist. She works since 1998 in the Rome newsroom of the daily newspaper La Repubblica, and she is a member of Unione Nazionale Cronisti Italiani (UNCI). Since 2013 she lives under police protection because of the death threats received while she was gathering information for her newspaper and after she testified on an act of violence.

Fabrizio Carotti

Fabrizio Carotti is general director of FIEG since 2011. Lawyer, accountant and auditor, he was CNEL (Consiglio Nazionale dell’Economia e del Lavoro) advisor, as representative of FIEG. Since 2011 he is President of ADS (Accertamenti Diffusione Stampa). He is vice president of Inpgi, president of Fondo Pensione Complementare dei Giornalisti Italiani, president of Consorzio Edicola Italiana. He worked as professor and collaborated with many newspapers.

Luigi Ciotti

Luigi Ciotti is a priest and a publicist journalist. He is the founder and president of the Associazione Libera, wich represents families’victims of Mafia across Italy. In 1965, with some friends, he promoted a youth group, then named Gruppo Abele. One of its first activities was an educational project in youth detention centers and the birth of some alternatives to prison communities for teens. He is onorary member of Ossigeno per l’Informazione. He receveid death threats and now lives under police protection from one year.

Claudio Fava

Claudio Fava is a deputy of the Italian Chamber of Deputies, professional journalist, screenwriter and writer, born in Catania in 1957. His father, the journalist Giuseppe Fava, founder of the monthly I Siciliani, was killed by mafia on 5 January 1984 in Catania. Until 1986 he continued the work of his father as director of I Siciliani. Afterwards he worked for some of Italy major media outlets among which Corriere della Sera, il Mattino, L’Espresso, l’Europeo, Avvenimenti and Rai, in Italy and abroad. He is deputy of the XVII legislature (elected with SEL, from june 2014 he is in the mixed group). He is vice president of the Parliamentary Anti-mafia Commission and drive the committee that made a cognitive inquiry on threatened journalists in Italy.

Giuseppe Giulietti

Giuseppe Giulietti is a famous Rai journalist and well known politician. He is the founder and current president of Associazione Articolo 21 . In the past he worked as an union official for FNSI. In 1988 he was one of the founders of Gruppo di Fiesole and for many years he took the seat as secretary of the USIGRAI, the Rai journalists’ trade union, linked with FNSI. From 1994 to 2012 he was elected as a deputy at the Italian Chamber of Deputies. During this period he held the position as a member of the parliamentary Board of Supervisors of the national television and radio broadcasting.

Pietro Grasso

Pietro Grasso is a judge and politician who has been appointed as President of the Italian Senate of the Republic since 2013. He was born in Licata in 1945, and grew up in Palermo where his family moved when he was a child. After he got a master in laws he pursued a career as a judge and prosecutor, during the ’80 he focused his investigations about corruption in the public administration and the fight to the organized crime. In 1985 he was appointed as Associate Judge in the Maxiprocesso to Cosa Nostra and later in 1999 he became Antimafia National Attorney. In 2012 he has been granted a temporary leave as a judge and he decided to devote himself to the political commitment in Institutions.

William Horsley

William Horsley is a former foreign correspondent in Europe and Tokyo of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and he is speaking at the Rome workshop on behalf of the Association of European Journalists. He is the AEJ’s Representative on Media Freedom and recently helped to create a new online platform where abuses of media freedom are logged.

Horsley is the International Director of the Centre for Freedom of the Media at the University of Sheffield and an Hon. Visiting Fellow at the Centre for Law, Justice and Journalism at City University London. Currently he is heading the Initiative on Impunity and the Rule of Law, a joint project of those two universities aimed at strengthening the protection of journalists against violence, intimidation and censorship in all regions of the world, in cooperation with UNESCO.

The AEJ is an association of individual members who each join a branch in the country where they work. It works closely with the Council of Europe, the human rights campaigning body. At relevant meetings of the Council of Europe the AEJ has observer status. And on its website the Council of Europe now hosts a new platform highlighting media freedom issues http://bit.ly/1Qwss.

Enzo Iacopino

Enzo Iacopino is a professional journalist. Since 2010 he is President of the National Board of Ordine dei Giornalisti, after being for three years the secretary general. He worked as editor in many daily newspapers. He was President of Stampa Parlamentare for 12 years. In the last years he fought to raise low remuneration for freelance journalists, many of which receive few euros for each article.

Radomir Ličina

Radomir Ličina is one of the founders and owners of Danas, the independent political daily from Belgrade, Serbia, in which he now holds the position of Senior Editor.

He has more than forty-five years of journalistic experience in daily newspapers of the former Yugoslavia (Borba and Naša Borba) and Serbia, reporting from Europe, South Asia, the Middle East and USA. He has written and translated a number of books on democracy and freedom. For several years, he was Member of the Board of International Press Institute (IPI) from Vienna.

Ličina is one of the Founders of the South East European Media Organisation (SEEMO) and a member of its Board of Directors.

SEEMO was founded in 2000 and exists to monitor and challenge abuses of press freedom in South East Europe, including Turkey and the republics of the former Yugoslavia.

Raffaele Lorusso

Raffaele Lorusso is FNSI secretary general since 2015. Born in Conversano (Bari), in 1967, he is professional journalist since 1999. He works for the daily newspaper “La Repubblica” in Bari. First he worked for La Gazzetta del Mezzogiorno. Since May 2009 he was President of Assostampa Puglia and member of the National Board of FNSI. Graduated in Law, he worked mostly with political news.

Antonio Martusciello

Antonio Martusciello is currently acting as the secretary of AGCOM the regulator and competition authority for the communications industries in Italy. He was born in Naples where he graduated in Public management. From 1984 to 1993 he worked as a company manager in the area of Media and Communication. During the XII legislature for the first time he was elected as a deputy in the lower house where he held the position as a member of the Parliamentary committee on foreign affairs in addition to this he also sat as a member of the Antimafia parliamentary committee. From 1997 to 2006 he has was elected as city councilman in Naples .From 1995 to 1998 he was been appointed as board member of” Regio Teatro San Carlo” a prominent cultural institution in Naples.. During his political career he also served as vice minister of Culture Heritage. He is also currently holding some courses in the universities of Rome and Naples.

Giuseppe Federico Mennella

Giuseppe Federico Mennella is professional journalist since 1976. Parliamentary journalist, he was for 12 years editor in chief of the daily newspaper L’Unità.

Then, until 2009, he was head of press office of the Senate of the Republic. He is professor of Ethics of the journalistic profession and responsible of Laboratory of Press Office at TorVergata university. He teached also in Cassino University and in different journalism schools.

He is Ossigeno’s secretary general.

Lutz Mükke

Dr Lutz Mükke is a journalist who has worked in Afghanistan and across Africa. The author of two academic books on foreign correspondents, he runs he runs the European Institute for Journalism and Communication Research (EIJC) and serves as Project Coordinator for Journalism, Science and International Relations at Media Foundation of Sparkasse Leipzig.

Mükke is addressing the Rome workshop as head of the European Centre for Press and Media Freedom (ECPMF), a new hub for co-ordinating the activities of journalists, lawyers and campaign groups. Established as a European Co-operative Society (ECS), the Centre is owned by its members and its long-term sustainability is assured by its wide network of financial sponsors and political supporters.

Press freedom has many meanings, from state surveillance in the UK to Mafia intimidation in Italy and deadly threats in the republics of the former Yugoslavia and Soviet Union. Funded by the EU, the ECPMF 2015 project supports journalists and media workers under threat across Europe – not only in the Member States. It will produce a one-stop Resource Centre to strengthen the practical and political capabilities of all who value and strive for media freedom.

Ulrike Schmidt

Ulrike Schmidt is a Project Officer at the Office of the OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media in Vienna.

Renate Schroeder

Renate Schroeder, EFJ Director has been working for the IFJ since 1993 and since 2013 for the European Federation of journalists. Project work, lobbying and presentation of the EFJ at international meetings is her main focus. The EFJ is a federation representing 60 journalists’ unions and associations in 41 European countries promoting the social and professional status of journalists. The EFJ is a member of the European Trade Union Federation and enjoys observer status at the Council of Europe.

Renate studied political science and international relations in Boston and Berlin. She has worked for the United Nations, the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, Deutsche Stiftung fuer Entwicklung (DSE) prior to joining the dynamic team in Brussels. She speaks German, English, French and Italian.

Alberto Spampinato

Alberto Spampinato, is an italian journalist from 1976. He is a media expert advisor about the protection of threatened journalists for the OSCE and the Italian Parliamentary Anti-Mafia Commission. His elder brother Giovanni, also a journalist, was killed in 1972 in Sicily. He was doing investigative journalist for the Italian newspapers L’Ora di Palermo about murders and connections between mafia, terrorism. Giovanni was intimidated and then killed. From 2007 to 2011 he was counselor of FNSI, the Italian union of journalists. He worked as professional journalist for the daily newspapers L’Ora (until 1992) and then for ANSA news agency as reporter on politics, parliament affairs and as the special reporters for the president of the republic activity. He is the founder and the director of Ossigeno per l’Informazione NGO.

Jane Whyatt

Jane Whyatt is the project manager at the European Centre for Press and Media Freedom in Leipzig, Germany. As a veteran broadcast journalist and academic she has worked as a news editor, reported from the Falkland Islands, made hundreds of BBC programmes as an indie producer and taught in London’s leading journalism schools.

Whyatt has a track record as an active member of the UK’s National Union of Journalists and a researcher for the London-based Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom .

To make a practical difference to the media landscape, Whyatt founded Angel Media Productions CIC, a non-profit social enterprise discovering and developing diverse talent in media and music. The company offers training and work experience to new journalists of all ages and backgrounds and has produced an acclaimed music-based BBC documentary on immigration.

At the ECPMF her role involves co-ordinating the activities of the partner organisations, reporting on events and content creation for the website www.ecpmf.eu She is responsible for ensuring transparency, avoiding duplication of efforts and reconciling the conflicting interests of journalists, lawyers and digital libertarians.

Sergio Zavoli

Sergio Zavoli, born in Ravenna in 1923, is a decane of the Italian journalism. Master and guide for several generations of reporters he is widely regarded as a prominent innovator in his profession. He is currently serving as senator of the Italian Republic. After a prestigious career within the Italian national broadcasting company, Rai, he was elected as president of the company from 1980 to 1986. For the Rai he was one of the most important reporter, editor, and director of the Radio News service. He has been also author of many successfully tv program like “Processo alla tappa”, entirely dedicated to cycling, “Nascita di un uomo” and “La Notte della Repubblica”, investigative reports about the birth and the rise of fascism and political terrorism during the ’70. In 2007 the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters of the University Roma Tor Vergata awarded him with the honoris causa master degree in Publishing and Journalism. For his intense report experience as reporter, writer and poet he won multiple awards, including the famous Premio Bancarella. Since 2013 he has been appointed honorary president of Ossigeno per l’Informazione.