Crimes on the front page – Justice and its report, between news, true crime, and TV series

Cogne, Garlasco, Brembate, Erba, Avetrana are now places identified with their crime. It is not a new phenomenon. Since the dawn of time, in the representation and narrative of crime we have sought, probably for anthropological reasons, answers to the crucial question of the origin of evil. We have also made it a form of entertainment in cinema and literature. Alongside fiction, information runs, a right-duty in a democracy: crime and judicial news are responsible for recounting the more or less serious crimes that actually occur around us and the trials that concern them. As a public opinion, we need to know who killed someone around us, with whom we identify, and to know if, how, and when the perpetrator is identified and brought to justice. From eighteenth-century gazettes to podcasts, only the means have changed: curiosity, sometimes morbid, has remained.

The timescales for justice and information are not, however, the same: the former has long timescales, the latter increasingly shorter. Often this temporal divergence-which technology hungry for ever-faster content has expanded-is filled with a story, made not only of news, but also of true crime, TV series, reconstructions ranging from talk shows to documentaries: all things that run parallel to justice, report it, imitate it, sometimes anticipate it, other times call it into question. The expression “parallel process” or “media process” was coined for this together, a phenomenon in which reality, short story, fiction mix. What relationship do these reconstructions have to the real process? What are the pitfalls of this mechanism? Is there a risk that this kaleidoscope in which a real story is assembled and dismantled will interfere with the reconstruction that is the responsibility of the Courts and with the perception of justice? And above all, how do we ordinary citizens understand where the truth lies?

Edmondo Bruti Liberati, a magistrate from 1970 to 2015, was a criminal judge, supervisory magistrate, and public prosecutor in Milan. A member of the Superior Council of the Judiciary in 1981, from 2002 to 2005 he was president of the National Association of Magistrates (ANM). He ended his career as Public Prosecutor of Milan. In recent years, alongside his legal contributions, he has written, with the clarity and depth of a historian, three books aimed at the general public: Magistratura e società nell’Italia repubblicana, Laterza 2018; and Delitti in prima pagina. Justice in the Information Society, Raffaello Cortina Editore, 2022 and Public Prosecutor. A controversial protagonist of justice, Raffaello Cortina Editore, 2024.