Berlusconi always manages to get away
Posted Saturday, March 28, 2009 in Holland
[de Volkskrant]
Surprising as citizens and mass media to accept his lies
From correspondent in Italy I often feel like Keanu Reeves in the movie The Matrix, or Jim Carrey in the Truman Show. It is a feeling appalling living and working in a democracy of Western Europe who was among the founders of the European Union and is part of prominent international forums like the G8, and yet feel like the characters who are struggling distressing film about illusion and reality.
But Italy's Silvio Berlusconi gives any reason. Fifteen years after the entry of Berlusconi in Italian politics, the country away from democratic values \u200b\u200bincreasingly essential.
Neo (Reeves) and Truman Burbank (Carrey) in The Matrix and The Truman Show they realize that their entire lives by setting the script of a powerful director. But I do not see their surprise and concern about in no way reflected in the reaction of people around them, all behave exactly as if nothing unusual happened, or simply do not realize it. Those who try to follow and understand politics and society in Italy will inevitably have the same experience.
Corrupt
The comparison to the attention very clearly last month. On the afternoon of Tuesday, February 17 appeared on the websites of the major Italian newspapers, a news titled 'David Mills was corrupt': Sentenced to four years and six months.
was about a bombshell: the Milan court had recognized the British lawyer David Mills guilty of corruption for accepting $ 600,000 from Silvio Berlusconi in the nineties, in return for making false testimony in two corruption cases instituted against the contractor-politician. The verdict against Mills was highly incriminating for the Italian prime minister of Italy, because if there is a corrupt, there must be a corruptor.
But strange things have happened in Italy a couple of strange things with this news. To begin several newspapers have written the sentence in quotation marks, as if it were not a legal fact but merely a personal opinion as to challenge with ease. This fact is immediately successful. The site
Web of Corriere della Sera, a newspaper in Italy with regard, several readers have questioned the decision of the court in Milan. "Because this ruling comes just 24 hours after the elections in Sardinia?" Asks one of them. Berlusconi's party, the People of Freedom (PDL), had won those regional elections by an overwhelming majority, the Italian island is back after a long time in the right hand, which caused great excitement in the environments of the PDL.
The judges have deliberately tried to spoil the party with their sentences, he believed the player mentioned above.
Another took another step forward. That "yet another decision made to ruin the party, "warns the judges," will only serve to strengthen our premier and his coalition, and above all keep it up and disappear automatically, hello, hello ".
As such, this reaction could be stored as emotional outbursts of avid supporters of Berlusconi. But strangely the Italian media have given it quite right. While the news was examined in depth on foreign broadcasters such as CNN and the BBC, the interesting news was grazed by Italian television. On
RaiUno RaiDue and the topic has been stuck in barely a minute in the late evening edition. On two of the three commercial networks of the Berlusconi verdict was completely ignored.
Judgement
And he was referring to the channel that the sentence, the reporter found still called the episode a corruption of "assumed pay" made by Berlusconi's Fininvest company, and closed its mini service with a long quotation from a parliamentary party of Berlusconi, who said that the President of the Court of Milan "is clearly antagonistic to the person of Silvio Berlusconi from the political point of view."
How can this happen? How can you deny and distort reality so easily and massively? For years, the international press points out the massive conflict of interest from the Premier.
Everyone knows
Silvio Berlusconi as the great man behind more than seventy companies, grouped in Mega Holdings as Mondadori (the largest publisher of newspapers, books and magazines in Italy), Mediaset (the largest television holding company of the country), Mediolanum ( financial services) and the football club AC Milan.
tangle of interests
Berlusconi controls most of the Italian media and is therefore called by many foreign newspapers 'entrepreneur-political' or 'premier-media mogul'. However, these words say too little about how this tangle of interests influence on Italian society. In general
Berlusconi is considered man-talking and easy smile carved on marpione redone with the patent on the embarrassing jokes (like the one about Barack Obama, which he called "young, beautiful and even tan" 'a couple of hours after the election of that 'last as President of the United States). As prime minister of Italy is therefore in the eyes of many a fool not to be taken too seriously. But these qualities by rascal conceals his unlimited power and influence that affect even the DNA of Italy - and unfortunately not in a positive way.
Its commercial broadcasters, its weekly review of "Panorama," the newspaper "The Newspaper "(Paul's brother) and a long list of family newspapers, line up every day with their master without shame. This forms servility reaches so high that the TV journalist as well as chief editor of the issuer Rete4 can get excited reading the news live the electoral victory of Berlusconi.
For the majority of Italian television is the main source of information, and is almost completely under the control of Berlusconi loyalists.
Ways rude
At the same time, the opposition members are thrown to the ground in an unusually rude. The most militant opponent of Berlusconi, Antonio Di Pietro, has long been called 'the Executioner', or 'threshers' in the various categories of news, which continue to show his less flattering picture, that immortalize the burly Di Pietro on the tractor, in shorts.
This bizarre approach 'journalism' is not based on a kind of natural loyalty 'of employees, but by specific orders. The Italian-American journalist Alexander Stille cites in his biography of Berlusconi "The Sack of Rome" (translated in Dutch as "Silvio Berlusconi / in love van de Rome), a former deputy editor of Il Giornale, that ranged about Berlusconi gave orders for the preparation in the nineties: "We have to sing in harmony on issues important to us (...) You, the editors, you must understand that we must begin an offensive aimed with all our means against anyone who shot him. If those who attack us are unjustly punished using all the different media of our group, the aggression ends. "
RAI
In the role of prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi calls for more or less the same apathy by government employees, especially within the issuer's state RAI. During the conflict in Iraq, which had the support of the previous Berlusconi government, RAI journalists could not define the opponents of the war "protesters for peace" or "peace", but had to call them "unruly."
'Are you an employee of the state!' Berlusconi called out against critical television journalist Michele Santoro a couple of years ago during a television broadcast, restoring order. Santoro wanted to take the floor to Mr Berlusconi, who was in line phone, because they refused to answer questions from the journalist, and just wanted to criticize the way to work Santoro.
criminal
During a press conference in Bulgaria Berlusconi accused Santoro and two other journalists have done a 'criminal use of public television'. The three had dared to make a transmission criticism of the prime minister. In what has since become famous as 'the edict Bulgarian', the prime minister demanded that the management of the issuer 'would not permit more that certain things happen'. A few months after the three had disappeared from the screen.
Italy as a democratic country is much worse than many believe. This shows the measures for limiting the freedom that this government is taking or preparation (such as prison for journalists who publish wiretaps of suspects, political pressure on doctors and teachers to report illegal immigrants to the police, the limitation dell'indipendenaza judiciary). But
the poor state of affairs is revealed especially in the way in which the press and public apathy ultimately react to such plans. Italy surrenders to the reality more and more highly colored which is duped by the apparatus of power of Berlusconi.
Badly
Sure, newspapers and journals of opinion such as La Repubblica, the Unit and the espresso continue to go hard against the prime minister when needed. But I am preaching in the wilderness, the two major Italian newspapers with a circulation of only 1.3 million out of a population of nearly 60 million.
Television is for the vast majority of Italians are the main source of information, and now almost all under monitoring of people trusted Berlusconi.
Moreover, even newspapers outside the Berlusconi empire feel his strong arm. Like the Turin newspaper La Stampa, owned by Fiat. 'Given the situation in the Fiat, La Stampa is not in the position to express criticism of Berlusconi, and this is equally valid for many other newspapers', so the editor in Stille Giulio Anselmi in the Sack of Rome. 'In addition to the newspapers he owns, everything there is a concentric circle of newspapers that depend directly or indirectly by him'. The damper
opposition leader Antonio Di Pietro said in his book The damper [in Italian with translation in the text, ndt], as has been apostrophe "murderess' two boys, while walking in Piazza Duomo in Milan.
A time of Peter was the hero of the country for millions of Italians in its role as a prosecutor the broad anti-corruption "Clean Hands" operation, which wiped out an entire generation of politicians and businessmen in the early cheaters nineties. 'This incident,' said Di Pietro about the incident in Piazza Duomo in Milan, 'shows that those guys at home are bombarded with false information from television'. After a decade
and a half, this modern indoctrination is giving so many fruits that Berlusconi dares to deny even the most indisputable truth.
Protests
For example, last year during the massal student protest against planned cuts in education. The students had occupied faculties of several universities, much to the annoyance of Berlusconi. 'Today I will give to the Minister of Interior, detailed instructions on how to intervene using the mobile units,' said the premier at a press conference.
When the opposition cried scandal, a day after Berlusconi said Bella had never threatened with the mobile units. Again was wrongly quoted by journalists. But all they could see and hear that the Prime Minister had actually said, his comments were broadcast by radio and TV.
Despite overwhelming evidence that Mr Berlusconi was hardened its position. And with success. Giacchè what they said on the evening TV news? 'The prime minister says he was misquoted'.
Democracy
In a healthy democracy journalists in service would have at least done quickly review the images of the press conference in question, thus allowing the viewer to conclude on its own if the prime minister was rimbecillito or not. But no. 'Hopefully, you can review our broadcast Yesterday on the internet, 'he whispered, the political editor of RaiUno at the end of the service.
Considering the situation prevailing in the Matrix Italy, his comments sounded almost like a heroic act of resistance.
Eric Arends is the Rome correspondent for the Volkskrant
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