Overview

• Giancarlo Santalmassi passed away on June 3, 2025 at age 83 in a Rome clinic where he had been hospitalized.
• He joined RAI in 1961 and introduced a dynamic “all-American” presentation style that reshaped Italian television news.
• Santalmassi was the first to break the live TV bulletin of Aldo Moro’s 1978 kidnapping and later delivered the Vermicino tragedy coverage around six-year-old Alfredino Rampi.
• His career included leadership roles at Radio Rai and, from 1998, at Radio24 where he hosted flagship talk shows and sharpened his reputation for confrontational interviews like the 2006 clash with Finance Minister Giulio Tremonti.
• In a formal statement, RAI’s board and top executives expressed condolences to his family and lauded his decades-long impact on Italian journalism.