Numero Zero by Umberto Eco Read Free Book Online

that there are varying opinions on a particular issue, and the newspaper is taking account of this irrefutable fact. The trick lies in quoting first a trivial opinion and then another opinion that is more respectable, and more closely reflects the journalist’s view. In this way, readers are under the impression that they are being informed about two facts, but they’re persuaded to accept just one view as being more convincing. Let’s give an example: a bridge has collapsed, a truck has fallen over the edge, and the driver has been killed. The article, after carefully reporting the facts, will say: We interviewed Signor Rossi, age forty-two, proprietor of a newsstand on the street corner. ‘What do you expect? That’s fate,’ he says. ‘I’m sorry for the poor driver, but it’s the way things go.’ Immediately after, there’s Signor Bianchi, age thirty-four, a builder working on a nearby construction site, who’ll say, ‘The local authority’s to blame, this bridge has had problems, they’ve known about it for some time.’ Who is the reader going to identify with? With the one who’s being critical, who’s pointing the finger of blame. Clear? The problem is what to put in quotes, and how to do it. Let’s try a couple of exercises. We’ll start with you, Costanza. A bomb has exploded in Piazza Fontana.”
    Costanza thought for a moment, then unleashed: “Signor Rossi, age forty-one, local authority employee, who might have been in the bank when the bomb exploded, told us, ‘I was not far away and felt the blast. It was horrendous. Someone is behind this with an agenda of their own, but we’ll never find out who.’ Signor Bianchi, age fifty, a barber, was also passing by at the time of the explosion, which he recalls as deafening and terrible, and commented, ‘It has all the makings of an anarchist attack, there’s no doubt about it.’”
    â€œExcellent. Signorina Fresia, news arrives of the death of Napoleon.”
    â€œWell, I’d say that Monsieur Blanche (let’s take his age and profession as read) tells us that perhaps it was unfair to imprison someone on that island whose life was already over—poor man, he too had a family. Monsieur Manzoni, or rather Manzonì, tells us, ‘We have lost someone who has changed the world, from the Manzanares to the Rhine. A great man.’”
    â€œManzanares, that’s good,” Simei said, smiling. “But there are other ways of passing on opinions undetected. To know what to include in a newspaper, you have, as journalists say, to set the agenda. There’s no end of news in this world. But why report an accident up here in the North, in Bergamo, and ignore another that’s taken place down south in Messina? It’s not the news that makes the newspaper, but the newspaper that makes the news. And if you know how to put four different news items together, then you can offer the reader a fifth. Here’s a newspaper from the day before yesterday. On the same page: Milan, newborn child tossed into toilet; Pescara, brother not to blame for Davide’s death; Amalfi, psychologist caring for anorexic daughter accused of fraud; Buscate, boy who killed an eight-year-old when he was fifteen released after fourteen years in reformatory. These four articles all appear on the same page, and the headline is ‘Child Violence and Society.’ They all certainly relate to acts of violence involving a child, but they are very different cases. Only one (the infanticide) involves violence by parents on a child; the business of the psychologist doesn’t seem to relate to children, since the age of this anorexic girl isn’t given; the story of the boy from Pescara proves, if anything, that no violence occurred and the boy died accidentally; and finally the Buscate case, on closer reading, involves a hoodlum of almost thirty, and the real