Silvio Berlusconi, Italy's new prime minister, is by all accounts a remarkable man, although what kind of remarkable is in dispute.

According to his supporters, he is a self-made broadcasting tycoon who took on Italy's state television monopoly and through risk, creativity, and hard work, broke the monopoly and built a $ 6.25 billion business empire. When he saw Italy about to fall to the leftists in the wake of the huge corruption scandals that have virtually swept away Italy's political leadership, he simply stepped in to do his civic duty. After he won, he resigned as head of operations for Fininvest, his giant broadcasting, publishing, retailing, and finance corporate group.

His opponents see things differently. In their view, Berlusconi -- who started out as a real estate developer -- wormed his way through a loophole in Italy's state broadcasting monopoly to build up an unparalleled position of his own: he now owns 47 percent of Italy's print and broadcast media, including nearly all the television industry not owned by the government. As his opponents see it, Berlusconi rose to that dizzying pinnacle of media power over the past twenty years through cutthroat ad-time deals, open violations of the feeble existing media laws, and ruthless power plays -- involving former prime minister and political boss Bettino Craxi and his notoriously corrupt Socialist party -- designed to prevent strong new media legislation.

While it has not been established that Craxi and Berlusconi connived to forestall antitrust legislation intended to reduce the extent of Fininvest's broadcasting monopoly, they were definitely close friends: they often vacationed together and Bettino Craxi and his wife, Anna, were godparents to two of Berlusconi's children, while Anna Craxi was maid of honor at Berlusconi's recent wedding to an actress.

With Craxi out of power and facing charges, Berlusconi stepped into the political vacuum last winter when he entered politics.

So neither supporters nor opponents were really surprised this spring when Berlusconi's party, Forza Italia (founded only three months earlier, and named after the supporters' slogan -- Go, Italy -- of Berlusconi's champion soccer team, A. C. Milan), triumphed at the first national elections to be held since the corruption scandals. They were even less surprised when Forza Italia formed a coalition government with two other right-wing parties, the populist and xenophobic Northern League and the neo-Fascist Alleanza Nazionale, the party that has received wide notice for the membership of Alessandra Mussolini, blood kin of both Benito Mussolini and Sophia Loren.

Berlusconi, of course, was named as prime minister. As prime minister, he will decide whether to respond to public pressure and pursue antitrust action against his own media empire. And, as prime minister, he will be greatly affected by the way that media empire covers his political activity.

The week after Berlusconi's electoral victory, his flagship newsweekly Panorama, with 540,000 readers, ran a full-cover photograph of His Ownership looking warm and inspired and sincere and reassuring. The headline beneath the campaign-quality photo read, "How He Wants to Change Italy"; beneath it, in inch-high type, ran the name: Berlusconi.

Sergio Romano, Italian ambassador to the USSR in the middle and late '80s and a columnist for one of Berlusconi's news magazines, Epoca, says, "If Ted Turner were to run for president, the news staff of CNN would immediately face a major concern. They would be worried that the quality of their primary product -- news -- might be contaminated and compromised. Unfortunately, Italian journalism does not enjoy this sort of tradition. Italian journalism does not even consider this to be a problem. Italian journalists feel that they are at the service of their boss." According to Romano, with few exceptions, Berlusconi's television journalists have joined the chorus.

Ernesto Galli della Loggia, a respected political commentator, adds that "in any case, investigative journalism doesn't really exist in Italy." There is, he says, "a tradition that newspapers are at the service of politics. Opposition newspapers criticize, but they do not undertake investigations to uncover specific forms of behavior. These latest scandals were uncovered entirely by investigating magistrates."

Ultimately, perhaps, it is the ownership of the media empire that is at issue more than its day-to-day use as a political tool.

Italy's generally toothless antitrust legislation requires Berlusconi to give up some of his media holdings. Now that he is prime minister, popular pressure for him to do so has greatly increased. Berlusconi is stalling for time -- he has appointed three "wise men," two of whom are associated with his broadcasting empire, to ponder the matter and report back to him this fall. "I think he will do little if anything," says Galli della Loggia. "He might sell a network if, as many expect, state television also sells a network in return."

One of the unexpected angles of this debate comes from the nature of the Italian parliamentary system. As Sergio Romano points out, "The political parties can sweep him away in the blink of an eye." So, if he sells off his media holdings and then loses power, he could be left without his political and his business base. Romano thinks Berlusconi "will sell if he receives equal value in return." All of these decisions, of course, will be made under the watchful eye of Berlusconi's own news outlets.

"We have entered a land without maps or roads," Romano adds.

cjr  |  archive  |  resources  |  contact  |  search  |  subscribe