In journalism, there are those who build a career by accumulation and those who build it by traversing places and stories. Camilla Nata belongs to this second category: her storytelling comes from the territory, from direct observation and constant presence, even before her face on video.
A native of Turin, she has traversed local television and major public service programs, always maintaining a strong link with real Italy. Today she is a journalist and half-bust anchor for TGR Piemonte, a reference point for RAI regional news.
Your path starts from the grassroots and reaches the national public service. How important was it to “traverse” places and communities before you got to conducting in the studio?
The career path of a journalist is done by being down-to-earth, going into the field and then meeting people, meeting cases, meeting situations. The studio then allows you to get into the homes of those who follow you and so you have to be able to have matured a deep relationship with the knowledge of the area and then be able to have a polite but always frank and direct approach with the audience that follows you from home. So from my point of view it is difficult to give up either aspect of the job.
The studio is important because of the quality of information it brings to the listener, but it is also important to get out of the studio to encounter the reality that is consumed in life, on the streets, in places and through and with people.
Being at the helm of TGR Piemonte today means reporting on an everyday Italy, often far from the spotlight. What do you think is the biggest responsibility of those who do information on the ground?
Information in the territory is definitely a proximity information, in the sense that when you work for a national circuit often your source is also the news agency, whereas in the territory it still remains door-to-door, often the sources, you meet faces and then you have to preserve them. Territory journalism is journalism that also has a very strong public service connotation because people expect to believe what they read on the TgR website, what they see in the TgR and hear on the GR radio in Piedmont. Often going around there still resists a deep segment of the population that tells you TgR said it, consequently it must be true. So here we have a big responsibility in front of us
A strong focus on the narrative of society and custom emerges in your work. How much has the way of telling people changed from when you started?
Telling society to custom today is very different because the tools have changed. Before there was pen and paper, now there is social media that is also used at the journalistic level, that is, an online that often comes even before the packaging of the news or the interview done via Teams or done over the phone. The online is the first outlook on the news. What characteristics does it have? It has a characteristic of speed, brevity and it is a kind of preview, a preview. And then comes everything else. So today compared to yesterday you definitely have to be faster, but not at the expense of quality of information that remains at the center and information must always be verified.
You are an ambassador for the quality of Made in Italy. How do you tell about excellence without turning it into slogans?
Excellence, in order not to become a slogan, must be told through the people who make it. Made in Italy, whether it is design, fashion, or the quality of agricultural and food products, always has the ingenuity, hand, heart, and passion of the man and woman behind it.
So in order to tell the story, one has to know to the core the stories of these men and women, the family stories, the stories that have led perhaps to entire generations of pasta producers, as is the case in Gragnano, or what has led entire generations to be involved in textiles, as in the case of the Biella area, in cars, as in the case of the Turin area. Even true excellence in goldsmithing arts, as in the case of Calabria. We have marvelous examples before our eyes of these excellences that are the product of entire families that have handed down from father to son, from grandfather to grandson this method of work that is the fruit of knowledge, skills and deeply identity ties with the territory of origin.
Your commitment to supporting projects against gender-based violence is well known. How can journalism really contribute to cultural change without making pain spectacular?
Not to showcase pain is to have a deep respect for it, and having respect for it means keeping the right distance without wanting to go too deep and allowing oneself to tell what the victim of gender violence feels like saying. Another way not to showcase pain is to operate like Socrates through maieutics, that is to try to bring out what the other person is not saying, I say other because gender-based violence is against women, but also against minors or the elderly or the disabled. So this maieutic ability and this respect to see the perimeter of the other and not go beyond it, combined, however, with the ability to be able to extrapolate what maybe doesn’t come out because of shyness, because of fear, here, this maybe double element allows not to make the pain spectacular.
That said clearly against gender violence there is only one narrative which is that of changing the cultural paradigm. The cultural paradigm can only be changed by bringing up and nurturing new generations capable of understanding that gender violence is an aberration of humankind, so a humankind worthy of the name must make gender violence something to be fought to the bitter end. Not fight in the sense of combat, but to go against, to go against in order to propose other models, new models, different models. Because the real game is always to have an alternative ready, not to just go against.
You have worked with many historical faces of Italian television journalism. Is there a teaching that you still consider to be fundamental today?
The teaching that I consider fundamental always is to look at the eyes with … the eyes of others, of course, with transparency, without veiling, without preconceptions. And then to look at the world with the eyes of the child, so with that curiosity stripped of categories that society imposes, precisely because the curiosity of the child is the one that pushes you forward, to ask the questions, to ask the why of so many things.
And we often hear children ask why it’s dark, why the sun rises, why it hurts, why you sing. So that’s kind of let’s say the hallmark of what my journalistic research is, so a simple approach. And then a type of language and writing that is adaptable to everyone, that can reach in a direct and straightforward way to anyone, so the use of a language free from judgments, superstructures, simple the news and not the commentary of the news.
Looking to the future, what do you feel you have not yet told?
Looking to the future, I feel that I have not yet told or have not yet told enough about the vast world of the invisible, the so-called invisibles, those who are not mapped, are not reported, do not ask for help, and so it is necessary to go out and find them one by one with their stories to bring out their souls and the whole world they carry. A vast world that often results in a great existential void, and an example of these invisibles is the homeless. Turin is a city that is home for many of them because it is configured with an architectural construction and porticoes that represent a moment of welcome of protection from the weather, from the cold.
The porches for many of these invisibles are home. Then like them there are children without real families behind them, house guests and because maybe one or both parents are unable to follow them because they have existential problems such as drugs, alcohol. Then there is the whole world of problems, eating disorders such as anorexia and bulimia that teenagers suffer from.
They are not aware that they are sick so they hardly ask for help, they are hardly therefore visible, and this is also a world that I would like one day to be able to tell about.
