We live in the age when one can die without being dead, killed by an algorithm, by a fake headline, by an uncontrolled wave of “shares” that share nothing but responsibility for the disaster. The case of Professor Bassetti’s fake murder is the latest, chilling reminder: truth is not only no longer sacred, it has become expendable.
One post. A notification. A hoax. And lo and behold, a man – in flesh, bone, family, job and name – is left for dead. Murdered.
(https://www.rainews.it/video/2025/05/video-del-tg1-annuncia-lomicidio-del-medico-matteo-bassetti-ma-e-un-deepfake-a00156fd-31dc-4b1e-83a7-66e5fefc15c5.html)
A pulp, detailed, even emotional narrative is built around it. The “sources” are nonexistent, but they are enough to generate thousands of comments, reactions, virtual cries and real accusations. For hours, perhaps days, Professor Bassetti has been the protagonist of a crime that never happened. His media body fed to a public that has lost the instinct to doubt. But not only that: even his colleague Valentina Bisti of Tg1, was pilloried. ( This time from AI)
It is not just a case. It is a symptom. It is proof that we live in a society where the click is worth more than control, where outrage has become a form of entertainment, and where real life can be distorted, manipulated, and rewritten without consequence-or so it is thought .
But the consequences are there. And how. Because a man being left for dead in front of his children, his patients, his colleagues, is not just “fake news.” It is a violence. It is an assault on dignity, on reality, on the right to exist outside the binary codes of social media. It is a rupture of the pact – already fragile – between information and citizenship. And in that rupture, not only the credibility of those who spread it dies. A piece of our civilization dies.
We must stop treating truth as if it were an opinion, and information as if it were a game. The Bassetti case must not only make us cringe. It must wake us up. It must make us ask ourselves who we have become, and how much more we are willing to tolerate before we demand — forcefully, lawfully, politely — that the right to truth once again become a pillar, not an option.
Because the next victim, in the vortex of absurdity, could be us. And no one will be there to disprove it in time.
It needs a law. It needs conscience. It needs responsibility.
We can no longer afford to be passive spectators. The Bassetti case must be a point of no return: it is time for the information ecosystem, digital and otherwise, to be held accountable. This is not about censorship, but accountability.
Every word published, every news shared, every alarm sounded has a weight. And when that weight falls on a living, real person, there must be a levee, a consequence, a duty of reparation.
The media must return to being presidia of truth, not speed factories. Social media must stop being free zones where people can be killed through no fault of their own. Politics can no longer look the other way: we need a clear, incisive rule that punishes the conscious dissemination of fake news, especially if it concerns the life and death of a human being.
But also, and most importantly, a civil awakening is needed. A new critical sense. The right to be informed cannot be separated from the duty to verify. And the right to speak cannot turn into the right to destroy.
Truth is not a hashtag. It is a common good. And today more than ever, we must defend it.
For this reason, taking up an inescapable call, regional councilor Giacomo Bugliani (Tuscany Region) has filed a motion for the establishment of a Regional Observatory on Disinformation and Source Control, with the aim of guaranteeing instruments of prevention, vigilance and protection of the truth, against the damage – including psychological and social – produced by a network without rules.
A first step, concrete and necessary. But it is up to all of us to decide whether it will be the beginning of change. Or just another headline that flows away.
