The distinguished Italian journalist, author and television broadcaster Enzo Biagi, who has died aged 87, was a lifelong defender of freedom of the press. The greatest infringement of his own liberty came in 2002, on orders from the then prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, when he was one of several leading journalists for the public broadcaster RAI to be told their services were no longer required.
The anger of the press mogul turned politician had earlier been stirred by a programme during the 2001 election campaign, when Biagi had interviewed - and shown his sympathy for - Berlusconi's opponent, Francesco Rutelli. A year later, the premier's fury touched new heights when Biagi interviewed comedian-film director Roberto Benigni, who pilloried Berlusconi in his customary sardonic style. Berlusconi announced his objections in surprisingly Mussolini-like tones during a state visit to Bulgaria - his condemnation of Biagi and others became known as "the Bulgarian edict".
Only when Romano Prodi returned to power last year did RAI gradually begin to welcome back those who had been expurgated. After five years' absence, Biagi reappeared on Italian television last April, being interviewed by one of his younger disciples on an iconoclastic Sunday evening show. Shortly afterwards, he began a new series of his own, interviewing the most controversial writer of the moment, Roberto Saviano, author of a bestselling book so frank in its revelations about the Neapolitan crime organisations that the author is under obligatory police protection.
Biagi was born of humble origins in Lizzano in Belvedere, a village in the Appenine mountains between Emilia and Tuscany. His father worked as a warehouse guard in a sugar factory, and his son could not go to university. From the age of 18, he worked as a reporter on the leading Bologna newspaper Il Resto del Carlino until he was called up for the army. However, in September 1943, when Italy signed an armistice with the allies and Mussolini founded his puppet republic in northern Italy, Biagi chose to join the partisans, with whom he fought in the mountains around his birthplace.
He returned to Bologna with the liberating armies and got his job back at the paper; for a while, he was a film critic. He then moved to Milan, where in 1952 he became editor of the magazine Epoca. He quit in 1960 when he disgreed with the publisher over the rightwing path that the Christian Democrat government was taking. Biagi had belonged to the anti-fascist political movement Justice and Freedom while a partisan; though he remained a radical, he never adhered openly to a political party.
After he started working regularly for RAI in the 1960s, for a while he was director of its only TV news programme. He continued to write for leading newspapers but won popularity with the many personalised magazine programmes he invented and compered for RAI, interviewing leading international personalities from Margaret Thatcher to Muammar Gadafy - the latter outside a tent in Libya a few hours before US bombers attacked Tripoli in 1986 - and travelling round the world. A passionate film fan, he gained the confidence and sympathy of those he interviewed, particularly Federico Fellini. Of the 80 books he published, many provide invaluable historical references, while there were others in a lighter vein, such as La Bella Vita (The Beautiful Life, 1996), a frank but friendly biography-interview with Marcello Mastroianni.
Biagi's wife and youngest daughter predeceased him. He is survived by two other daughters, Carla and Bice.
· Enzo Biagi, journalist, born August 9 1920; died November 6 2007