1. Enrico Mentana was born on 15 January 1955 and is an Italian journalist and television presenter.
18 Facts About Enrico Mentana
1. 2.
Enrico Mentana founded the Italian news programme TG5 and directed it from 1992 to 2004.
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Enrico Mentana is the director of the online newspaper Open, which he founded in December 2018.
4.
Enrico Mentana was born in Milan on 15 January 1955.
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Enrico Mentana is the eldest son of Franco Mentana, well-known correspondent of La Gazzetta dello Sport and native of Bova, and Lella, of Jewish origins.
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Enrico Mentana was baptized as a Catholic, although he will always show great closeness to the Jewish people.
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Enrico Mentana grew up in Milan's district of Giambellino, he attended the Liceo Ginnasio Alessandro Manzoni, first joining the small anarchist group Movimento Socialista Libertario, in 1968, and then the Italian Socialist Party.
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Enrico Mentana collaborated and then became director of the magazine Giovane Sinistra, the official organ of the Federation of Young Socialists, of which he was vice-president from 1977 to 1979.
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Enrico Mentana enrolled in the Faculty of Political Sciences of the University of Milan but never graduated.
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Enrico Mentana joined the redaction of La Gazzetta dello Sport as a proofreader in 1973, when he was 18 years old.
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Enrico Mentana became a professional journalist on 2 February 1982.
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On 27 February 1980, Mentana was hired by RAI, Italy's public radio and television broadcaster, at the Foreign Affairs editorial staff of TG1, the newscast hosted on the main channel Rai 1.
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Enrico Mentana made a swift career in the company, which led him to be the anchor of the mid-evening edition of TG1 first and then editor-in-chief of the weekly TV documentary Speciale TG1, taking over from Alberto La Volpe.
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Enrico Mentana was the moderator of the face-to-face between Silvio Berlusconi and Romano Prodi before the subsequent 1996 Italian general election.
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In 1994, Enrico Mentana criticized the choice of the dismissal of Indro Montanelli from Il Giornale giving first the news and interviewing him live on TG5 on the same day.
16.
On 11 November 2004, during the newscast closure, Enrico Mentana announced that the company exempted him from the direction of TG5, replacing him with Carlo Rossella.
17.
Enrico Mentana was thus leaving the news he founded and directed for almost thirteen years.
18.
On 5 September 2005, ten months after leaving TG5, Enrico Mentana debuted with Canale 5's new information programme, Matrix, which he conceived and conducted three times a week in the late-night in direct competition with Bruno Vespa's Porta a Porta.