ANSA crime beat journalist LaraSirignano, who scooped the arrest of Mafia super fugitive MatteoMessina Denaro in January last year, on Tuesday received the25th annual Mario Francese Prize for crime reporting, named after a Sicilian journalist murdered by Cosa Nostra in 1979. The citation read
: "for having interpreted crime reporting with a method that combines precision, independence, tinmeliness and civic commitment".
Addressing students present, Sirignano described the growing difficulties of reporting on crime in Italy: "access to judicial documents is being increasingly hampered, and limits are being set on magistrates and also journalists, behind the alibi of sacred values, such as presumption of innocence, which however cannot be safeguarded by watered-down information".
Mario Francese was a crime reporter for the Giornale di Sicilia.
He was the first journalist to expose the role of Toto 'theBeast' Riina and the Corleonesi within the Sicilian Mafia, and because of this he was killed on 26 January 1979.
After 22 years, in 2001, those who had decided to eliminate him were convicted.
Messina Denaro, one of the late Riina's main heirs and the last godfather, died of cancer in a prison hospital in September.
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