The Journalism World Mourns: Toni Capuozzo Has Died

Farewell to Toni Capuozzo: the Friulian journalist, a familiar face on Mediaset, passed away at age 77 after a battle with cancer. A few days ago, the veteran war correspondent himself had revealed on social media that he was ill and was “trying to cope with it.”

After his political activism in the Italian Communist Party and Lotta Continua, Capuozzo began his journalism career in 1979, when he contributed to *Reporter* and *Panorama*, covering political news from Latin America. Capuozzo worked for the Mediaset media group beginning in the early 1990s, when he reported on international conflicts ranging from Somalia to Afghanistan, from the Middle East to the former Yugoslavia.

In the early 2000s, he covered the war in Iraq, and in 2004, he was part of the Tg5 crew taken hostage by Mahdi Army paramilitary forces in Najaf. For 17 years, he hosted the program *Terra!* His style had always been distinguished by his focus on individual stories and the human consequences of conflicts. In addition to his journalistic career, Toni Capuozzo was also a writer and playwright.

In the post in which he announced his illness, Capuozzo chose direct words: “I value my privacy enough and find medical gossip unbearable enough to say without hesitation: yes, I have cancer.” The journalist added: “I’ll try to face it as best I can, with the help of doctors and the love of so many people, both near and far,” without going into details about the diagnosis or treatment.