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Michele Santoro (Salerno, July 2, 1951) is an Italian journalist, broadcaster and anchorman, and Member of the European Parliament.
Graduated in Philosophy, then he entered successfully in the media world, leading as editor-in-chief the regional newspaper La Voce della Campania (Voice of Campania) and having collaboration with some other national newspapers and magazines like Il Mattino, L'Unità and Epoca.
Before to be hired by the RAI (the national public TV service), he had some experiences for a number of radio channels. He started to experience for TG3 (the Rai3 news division), first as journalist from foreign countries, then realizing and ideating TV specials and weekly TV magazines, and in the end working as responsible of the Culture, still for TG3.
But his popularity basically sourced as author and anchorman for TV journalistic shows like Samarcanda, Rosso e Nero and Temporeale. Santoro left RAI in 1996, because of disagreements with the public television's direction, to then come back in 1999, after a three-years parenthesis for Mediaset (the most popular private network ensemble, and the one and only rival of RAI in the Italian TV world). Since his return, he led a pair of shows for RAI, Circus (for the first channel) and Sciuscià , a Rai2 show composed by a series of reportages narrated like movies who caused him to be continuosly charged, especially by the right-wing coalition led by Silvio Berlusconi (who was his former boss during the Mediaset period 1996-1999) which charged him of factiousness for the Ulivo left-wing coalition, who was the government majority at the time. The show was on air till May 2002.
Then, one year after the Berlusconi winning for the 2001 elections, RAI decided to not renew to Santoro the contract. The left-wing Ulivo coalition defended Santoro, claiming the House of Freedoms, even Berlusconi, to plan a censorship in order to control easier the information, referring to the contemporaneous instant dismissals of historical RAI journalist Enzo Biagi and showman and comedian Daniele Luttazzi and remembering the Berlusconi's declarations released in Sofia, Bulgaria, during an official visit to the Eastern European country, where the Italian PM asked for Biagi, Santoro and Luttazzi's dismissal from RAI, charging them to have done "a criminal use of public television".
In 2004, Santoro accepted the offer of candidacy proposed by the new moderate-left confederation called All United in the Olive Tree. He was elected as MEP with a great voting success, obtaining a total of more 700,000 votes in the whole Italy.
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