Requiem for Journalism

By Serena Tinari

It was the first Italian academic event dedicated to Covid-19. Months in the making, under the patronage of Turin's Politecnico. A scientific committee worked for months on the international panel of speakers for POLI-COVID-22. The committee was in constant dialogue with the public health authorities, that would have brought in their own "experts". The program was divided into five thematic areas: Biology; Medicine; Law; Bioethics, BioLaw and Biopolitics; Sociology and Communication. Scholars from institutions, both Italian and foreign, would present the state-of-the-art in various scientific fields and participate to the until then sorely missed open debate on the evidence behind pandemic policies. A few days before the event, the Istituto Superiore di Sanità, the Italian equivalent to the NIH, and the pandemic task force (Comitato Tecnico Scientifico) opted out, and Politecnico withdrew the patronage. Venues were not available anymore. The event nevertheless took place, in a run-dow…