Numero Zero by Umberto Eco Read Free Book Online Page A

news was fourteen years ago. So what is the newspaper saying on this page? Perhaps nothing intentional, perhaps an idle editor found himself with four agency dispatches and thought it was a good idea to run them together to produce a stronger effect. But in fact the newspaper is transmitting an idea, an alarm signal, a warning . . . And in any case, think of the reader: each of these news items, taken individually, would have had little impact, but together they force the reader to stay on that page. Understood? I know it’s commonly said that if a laborer attacks a fellow worker, then the newspapers say where he comes from if he’s a southerner but not if he comes from the North. All right, that’s racism. But imagine a page on which a laborer from Cuneo, etc. etc., a pensioner from Mestre kills his wife, a news vendor from Bologna commits suicide, a builder from Genoa signs a bogus check. What interest is that to readers in the areas where these people were born? Whereas if we’re talking about a laborer from Calabria, a pensioner from Matera, a news vendor from Foggia, and a builder from Palermo, then it creates concern about criminals coming up from the South, and this makes news . . . We’re a newspaper to be published in Milan, not down in Catania, and we have to bear in mind the feelings of readers in Milan. Note that ‘making news’ is a great expression. We’re the ones who make the news, and we must know how to make it emerge between the lines. Dottor Colonna, you’ll spend your free hours with our news team, looking through the agency dispatches, building up pages around a theme, learning to create news where there wasn’t any, or where it wasn’t to be seen. All right?”
    Â 
    Another topic was the Denial. We were still a newspaper without any readers, and so there was no one to challenge any of the news that we provided. But a newspaper is also judged by its capacity to handle denials, especially if it’s a newspaper that shows it doesn’t mind getting its hands dirty. Also, by training ourselves for the real denials when they came, we could invent letters from readers that we follow up with a denial. Just to let the Commendatore see what we are capable of.
    â€œI discussed this yesterday with Dottor Colonna. And Colonna would like to give you a little talk on the technique of denial.”
    â€œSo,” I began, “let’s give a textbook example, which is not only fictitious but also, let’s say, rather far-fetched: a letter-of-denial parody that appeared a few years go in
L’Espresso
. The assumption was that the magazine had heard from a certain Signor Preciso Perniketti as follows.”
    Â 
Dear Editor:
With reference to your article “Ides Murder Suspect Denies All” by Veruccio Veriti, which appeared in the last issue of your magazine, please allow me to correct the following matters. It is not true that I was present at the assassination of Julius Caesar. Please kindly note from the enclosed birth certificate that I was born at Molfetta on March 15, 1944, many centuries after the regrettable event, which moreover I have always deplored. Signor Veriti must have misunderstood me when I told him I invariably celebrate March 15, 1944, with a few friends. It is likewise incorrect that I later told a certain Brutus: “We will meet again at Philippi.” I wish to state that I have never had any dealings with anyone called Brutus, whose name I heard for the first time yesterday. During the course of our brief telephone interview, I did indeed tell Signor Veriti that I would soon be meeting the city’s assistant traffic officer, Signor Philippi, but the statement was made in the context of a conversation about the circulation of automobile traffic. In this context, I never said that I had appointed assassins to get rid of that traitorous bully Julius Caesar, but rather, “I had an appointment with the