Postcards from my mind

This is an essay that I wrote in 2004 which looks at Silvio Berlusconi’s influence on the Italian media. This essay was thankfully made obsolete following Romano Prodi’s election victory in 2006, but Italians go to the polls today to elect a new government and it looks as if Berluska is going to win.

Silvio Berlusconi is ranked twenty-fifth on the Forbes list of the world’s wealthiest people. His economic empire is based primarily on the media industry. The Berlusconi controlled Finnivest group has a forty-eight percent share in the television group Mediaset which controls three terrestrial stations that enjoy forty-five percent of viewing figures in Italy.

Finnivest also enjoys a forty-eight percent share in the Mondadori publishing group. Mondadori accounts for thirty-one percent of the Italian publication industry and forty-five of magazine publications while Finnivest’s marketing group, Publitalia, accounts for sixty percent of all advertising in Italy. In addition, the Berlusconi family own the daily newspapers Il Giornale, which has a readership of 230,000, and Il Foglio, which has 10,000 readers daily. Moreover, through shares in Mondadori, Finnivest controls the most popular Italian weekly magazine Panorama.

Berlusconi is also the prime minister of Italy. Consequently, he has indirect influence over RAI, the state run broadcaster. While large sections of the national news media are controlled by media corporations in Europe such as Bertelsmann and Kirch in Germany and Rupert Murdoch’s media empire in Britain “Berlusconi’s combination of media power and political power is unique in Europe.” Consequently, the conflict of interests between Berlusconi’s political and business interests has been widely criticised and is perceived as a threat to the pluralism of Italian journalism.

Italy is ranked in fifty-third place out of 139 countries in Reporters Without Borders’ report on press freedom worldwide. This is as a direct result of Berlusconi’s conflict political and media interests. In addition, the Council of Europe’s parliamentary assembly ‘Report on the freedom of expression in Europe’, 14 January 2003, stated that “the potential conflict of interest between holding of political office by Mr Berlusconiand his private economic and media interests is a threat to media pluralism.” However, both groups acknowledge that the print media in Italy offers a wide range of views which reflect the broad spectrum of political opinions in Italy.

The party press in Italy, i.e. the newspapers of political parties, are a distinctive feature of the Italian press, e.g. the Neo-Fascist paper Il Secolo d’Italia, the communist paper il Manifesto, and l’Unità financed by the Democratici di sinistra. While the importance of the party press in Italy has decreased significantly in the post ‘Velvet Revolution’ world its continued existence ensures a broad range of political opinions are represented in the Italian press. However, the influence of the party press is limited primarily to the adherents of the specific political viewpoints each paper represents. Conversely, it is the commercial press in Italy which has the greatest impact on influencing broader political opinion in Italy

The primary commercial newspapers in Italy are Il Corriere della Sera and La Repubblica. Il Corriere della Sera has a daily circulation of 700,000 making it Italy’s most popular daily newspaper. It is owned by the Rizzoli Corriere della Sera group and is regarded as a centrist newspaper. Notably, the newspaper was critical of the Berlusconi government in the lead up to the Iraq war and with regard to Berlusconi’s conflict of media and political interests. La Repubblicais owned by Carlo de Bendetti and is Italy’s second largest daily newspaper with a circulation of 650,000 copies. Analogous to the de Bendetti group’s weekly magazine L’Espresso, La Repubblica is a centre-left publication. Thus, it is clear that the Italian press offers a broad range of political viewpoints.

However, Silvio Berlusconi’s influence on the Italian press has increased in recent times. Finnivest’s thirty-one percent share in the Mondadori group was utilised for political purposes prior to the Italian general election of 2001. Each household in Italy received a copy of a book Una Storia Italiana, a piece of political propaganda promoting Berlusconi and Forza Italia. In addition, Indro Montanelli, founding editor of the Berlusconi owned daily Il Giornale, was fired in 1994 for his refusal to endorse Forza Italia. Lumley notes that “through newspapers generations of entrepreneurs have sought to exercise their influence” and that “the majority of influential newspapers [in Italy] were, and are, controlled by companies, not by parties or government.” However, while Berlusconi is an entrepreneur he is concurrently the head of a political party and of government.

The adoption of the Berlusconi government’s draft law on telecommunications, i.e. the so-called ‘Gasparri’ law, by the Italian Senate on 29 April 2004 represents a significant threat to the pluralism of the Italian print media. Italian President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi refused to sign the bill in 2003 considering it a potential threat to media pluralism. The law allows for media companies to have shares in more than one news media group. Theoretically, print media groups, which were previously banned from owning television networks, can from January 2009 onwards but into the television industry. However, the financial reality is that only Finnivest-Mediaset is currently in a position to take advantage of this law, thus potentially increasing Berlusconi’s control of the Italian print media.

As previously noted according to Reporters Without Frontiers and the Council of Europe’s parliamentary assembly pluralism in the Italian media is upheld. However, the author Alexander Stille claims that Berlusconi has been able to exercise increased indirect control over Il Corriere della Sera since his entrance into politics in. Stille claims that Il Corriere della Sera’s editorial position has moved noticeably to the right since the formation of Forza Italia in 1994. In addition, Stille maintains that Berlusconi has dedicated his attention primarily to influencing the section of the print media which has a “broad mainstream centrist readership,” e.g. Il Corriere della Sera, because it is a source of potential voters for Forza Italia.

Notably, it is the commercial press in Italy which has the greatest impact on influencing wider political opinion in Italy. Lumley notes that “particularly in times of sudden change when readers are looking for guidance and when political figures are seeking to construct new alliances and to win support, these newspapers [the commercial press] have played a notable political role.”

In the autumn of 2002 Il Corriere della Serafeatured articles on Berlusconi’s conflict of interests and the prosecution of Berlusconi and Forza Italiasenator Cesare Previti for bribing a judge in the acquisition of the SME food group. Il Corriere della Sera’s editor at the time, Ferruccio De Bortoli, came under increased pressure from Berlusconi’s under secretary and spokesman, Paolo Bonaiuti, to allow Previti the right to reply. Concurrently, Salvatore Ligresti, a Sicilian financier and business associate of Berlusconi, tried unsuccessfully to become a shareholder in the HdP group which controls Il Corriere della Sera. This action was viewed by the staff of the newspaper as an attempt by Berlusconi to “progressively take control of the newspaper.”

In addition, Il Corriere della Serais part owned by the Agnelli family whose Fiat group was undergoing financial difficulty during this period. Stille notes that concurrently Fiat had increased its advertising on Mediaset networks while reducing publicity on RAI. Thus, Stille claims that “keeping the good graces of the prime minister” was fundamental to Fiat’s business and increased the pressure on De Bortoli to resign as editor of Il Corriere della Sera

Although Stille’s claims may be viewed as apocryphal the dismissal of two of Italy’s leading journalists from RAI 1 in 2002 illustrates Berlusconi’s influence in the broadcast media and his potential influence over the print media. Berlusconi’s public criticism of two of RAI 1’s leading journalists Enzo Biagi and Michele Santoro led to the cancellation in 2002 of their news programmes Il Fatto and Sciuscià respectively.

Santoro openly criticised Berlusconi and his government, while Biagi, the elder statesman of Italian journalism, had invited the actor-director Roberto Benigni onto his programme on the eve of the general election of 2001. Benigni proceeded to lampoon Berlusconi. The dismissal of Biagi and Santoro, whose programmes were amongst two of the most popular news and current affairs programmes on Italian television, illustrates the potential influence Berlusconi could have on the print media in Italy.

Moreover, the print media in Italy suffers economically from the dominant position of the broadcast media in Italy. Reporters Without Frontiers maintain that television’s dominance in Italy could ultimately pose a threat to the print media’s independence. In addition, television is the primary source of news for Italians who watch on average 240 minutes of television each day. Furthermore, fifty-seven percent of all advertising in Italy is on television as opposed to thirty-five percent in the UK and twenty-three percent in Germany.

This is to the detriment of the finances of the Italian print media. Consequently, the agenda of the press in Italy has become increasingly influenced by television. Papuzzi states that “anything in the telegiornale has to be covered in the morning edition.” It is too far fetched to claim that Berlusconi is responsible for the increased influence of the television industry on newspaper content. However, Publitalia’s sixty percent control of advertising in Italy and the increase in television advertising over newspaper advertising can be linked indirectly to Berlusconi’s influence.

While the Italian print media industry enjoys a healthy pluralism in contrast to the broadcast media this pluralism is under increasing threat. The De Bortoli incident demonstrates that the strapotente position which Berlusconi exercises over the Italian television and advertising industries can be potentially extended to increase his influence on the pluralistic Italian press. In addition, the passing of the ‘Gasparri’ law further threatens the pluralism of the Italian press and has opened up the possibility of Berlusconi extending his media empire to control the section of the Italian print media which is the most influential with moderate voters in times of political uncertainty, i.e. the commercial press.

Bibliography

Baranski, Zygmunt G. and Lumley, Robert (eds.). Culture and Conflict in Postwar Italy. London: The Macmillan Press Ltd, 1990

Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly. ‘Monopolisation of the electronic media and possible abuse of power in Italy’, http://assembly.coe.int/Documents/WorkingDocs/doc04/EDOC10195.htm#_ftnref12

(document downloaded on 30/03/05)

The Economist. ‘The SME affair’, http://www.berluscastop.it/__artic/econ_en1.htm, (document downloaded on 30/03/05)

Forbes List of the World’s Richest People, http://www.forbes.com, (document downloaded on 30/03/05)

Forgacs , David and Lumley, Robert (eds.). Italian Cultural Studies: An Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996

Glossarietto della politica e dell’economia italiana. http://www.ucc.ie/italian/resources/glossarietto.html (document downloaded on 30/03/05)

Jones, Tobias. The Dark Heart of Italy. London : Faber, 2003

Ketupa.net Media Profiles. ‘Berlusconi’, http://www.ketupa.net/berlusconi.htm (document downloaded on 30/03/05)

Lumley, Robert. ‘Peculiarities of the Italian newspaper’, in Italian Cultural Studies: An Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996, Pp. 199-215

Reporters Without Borders. ‘A media conflict of interest: anomaly in Italy’, http://www.rsf.fr/article.php3?id_article=6393 (document downloaded on 30/03/05)

Reporters Without Borders. ‘Gasparri law finally adopted’, http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=8695 (document downloaded on 30/03/05)

Wide Angle. ‘Interview: Alexander Stille’, http://www.pbs.org/wnet/wideangle/shows/berlusconi/transcript3.html (document downloaded on 30/03/05)