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May 15, 2020 Journalist Sandro Petrone died, he was 66 years old. For about five years he had been fighting with a microcytoma that had hit his lungs and against which he had fought with great force, also undergoing experimental treatments.

Special envoy of TG2, he followed the most important events of the last decades: from the attack on John Paul II to the war in the Gulf, from the fall of the Berlin Wall to the attacks on the Twin Towers, from the attacks in Madrid to those of Oslo, up to the 'Arab spring' in Tunisia and Libya. Since 1996 he has spent long periods in the United States following the presidential election. The collaboration with Rai dates back to 1979, in 1987 he worked at Telemontecarlo, before finally returning to Rai. In his professional career he also worked as a reporter for the newspaper of Taranto, Brindisi and Lecce.

In recent years he has taught at the Faculty of Communication Sciences in La Sapienza, at the Master of Iulm and in the School of Journalism of Perugia. In particular, in the latter institution which has Rai as its founding partner, Petrone dedicated himself with self-sacrifice and humanity to the students, transmitting to them all his knowledge of the television world and his passion for news. He wrote the book "The language of news", teaching tools and rules of television language.

Among his hobbies, music, the passion for the blues, which led him to collaborate with the greats of the Neapolitan song, from Edoardo Bennato to Pino Daniele. Lately he had returned to music, releasing the album "Solo Fumo", which he himself defined as a collection of "nine pictures of life". "I am a warrior, I do not fear death", he wrote in the introduction to the texts, some of which report his handwriting: "The warrior does not go to win or lose, he goes to fight. Looking back, after almost three decades of conflict in around the world, I realized that that lesson worked within me, starting with the idea of ​​taking death as a companion and witnessing one's actions, a choice that also dissolves fear. The urge to travel to witness the world, of contrasts, reveals itself as a need to fight against Evil, so inescapable as to put personal sacrifice in the background ". The last song he wrote sent him a few days ago to some friends through a Whatsapp audio, while he was already in hospital: "Joy dancing in winged clouds", are the last words of the song, accompanied by the notes of his piano.