Bruno Vespa

Bruno Vespa
Born	(1944-05-27) 27 May 1944 (age 72) L'Aquila, Abruzzo, Italy
Occupation	Journalist
Title	LL. B.
Spouse(s)	Augusta Iannini

Bruno Vespa (born 27 May 1944) is an Italian television and newspaper journalist.

A former director of the Italian state-owned TV channel Rai Uno's news program TG1, Vespa is the founding host of the program Porta a Porta (English:"Door to door"), which has been broadcast without interruption on RAI channels since 1996.

Vespa was born in L'Aquila, Abruzzo. He is married to Augusta Iannini, who is a judge.

Vespa began working with the local press in his native Abruzzo at a relatively young age, authoring sports articles for the L'Aquila branch of the newspaper Il Tempo when he was sixteen years old.

In 1962 he became a radio announcer on RAI broadcasts and, after obtaining his LL.B. in 1968, began hosting the daily newscast Telegiornale RAI (afterwards renamed TG1).

During the 1970s and 1980s, he undertook several controversial and ground-breaking projects, mainly as a foreign correspondent for RAI, interviewing many soon-to-be-influential personalities of the decades (for example, Vespa interviewed then-Cardinal Karol Wojtyła in 1977, a full year before his election to the pontificate).

In 1977 he co-hosted, with Arrigo Petacco, the news program Tam Tam, moving the following year to a different format, precursor to that of Porta a Porta, where up-and-coming personalities and current events were discussed in front of a live studio audience, which participated to the exchange through Q&A sessions (hence, the program was called Ping Pong).

In June 1984 he was named "official commentator" for the live, televised broadcast of the State funeral for Enrico Berlinguer, who had been the leader of the Italian Communist Party. During the broadcast, he erroneously announced that Pietro Valpreda had been found guilty of the Piazza Fontana bombing, whereas he was a mere suspect, at the time—a mistake for which he publicly apologised on several occasions.

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