Activists’ work with narratives is only one way that stories shape our lives. Whether in his journalism, his work as Co-Executive Director of CILD (Italian Coalition for Civil Liberties and Rights / Coalizione Italiana per le Libertà e i Diritti civili), or in his personal life, throughout our conversation, Andrea Oleandri stressed the importance of “stories where people without a voice speak about themselves.”

Andrea began his journalism journey working for local newspapers and magazines covering local sports and politics in his native city, Rome, where he still lives today. He recommends Testaccio, a neighbourhood that brings a small-town feel to the heart of the big city and where he spent many of the happiest moments of his life.

Recently, Andrea’s journalism has shifted focus to the Lavialibera project, an independent newspaper that carries out numerous investigations and for which he writes a column on prisons. He is one of a hundred people allowed into prisons to speak with the inmates as part of the Antigone Observatory, a long-standing Italian organisation founded in 1991, and another Liberties member organisation, with which he has been collaborating since 2014. While much of the reporting has to do with the prison’s conditions, Andrea’s focus is on the data and stories that Antigone gathers from prisoners across the country.

Understanding across borders

While telling me about his passion for journalism, Andrea recounted interviewing a Cameroonian refugee, who complained that people were shocked to learn that the same subjects were taught in Cameroonian and European schools. It showed how our preconceived notions lead us to underestimate people. “We can’t think about migrants as people who have no capacity or are always struggling”, Andrea told me.

For people arriving in a new country, portraying an honest picture is paramount to their establishment in their new home. By sharing these marginalised stories, we get to show the real people that human rights agencies aim to protect. For Andrea, only storytelling has this power.

New challenges

Although Andrea remains a prolific reader, he jokes that since becoming a father he has had less time - but he brings his eldest son along with him on bicycle rides. The experience of fatherhood has also given him insight into how the next generation will deal with the internet as its main form of communication.

Andrea believes children “are the first people that are in struggle with disinformation”, because they have less experience to draw from when they assess a piece of news. When Andrea trained to be a journalist, he could easily buy two newspapers and compare them, whereas a feed only shows you what you want to see. “It used to be up to the journalist to verify information, but now it is up to you”, he laments.

Yet children are often being taught about the media as if nothing had changed. Andrea is concerned that “at school in Italy you don't study anything about social media”, a concern that exists in many countries. As Andrea illustrated through his experience as a journalist, author, reader and father, stories are shaped by how they are presented to us and shape our perceptions in the same way. Social media doesn’t take away stories’ power to inform us, move us, and change our perspective on the world. But we need to be aware of how these dynamics change in today’s digital world.

Andrea’s Recommendations

Talking with a man so acutely aware of a story’s importance, I couldn’t resist asking for a few book recommendations. Andrea recommended “Eating Animals” by Jonathan Safron Foer. Luckily, I had the chance to read it before writing this article. It combines Foer’s personal account of feeling compelled to become vegetarian (though he never became one in a strict sense) with an exploration of the meat industry and its ethical impact. By framing investigative research within a personal story, I was able to really see the impacts of Foer’s work through his own eyes.

Andrea was right; it was a perfect example of journalistic storytelling’s ability to take on a revelatory quality. His own aims are quite similar: share stories and teach the skills to understand them, so people can learn about the commonalities that unite us through literature.

Andrea is a father, biker, reader, an (aspiring) author, and an excellent journalist whose work is grounded in the wisdom only life experience can grant us.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.