Silvio Berlusconi still controls virtually all of Italy's nongovernmental TV, a sizable chunk of the print media, one of the two largest publishing companies, as well as a vast array of retail, insurance, and sports franchises. He is still the leader of the most popular political party -- Forza Italia -- even though he resigned as prime minister last December. He could rise again to power, and many Italians still worry about how Berlusconi's media cover Berlusconi (see "Italy's New Hall of Mirrors," CJR, July/August).

So when Berlusconi stepped down after a stormy seven-month reign, it came as some surprise that one of the first major publicity nightmares to face him should have come from the flagship of his own publishing fleet, Panorama, Italy's leading newsweekly. Forza Italia -- according to a Panorama scoop -- had received a sizable block of Mafia-controlled votes in the March 1994 elections. The Mafia has long controlled a major block of votes in the Sicilian region, and is widely believed to use them to control politicians. For Berlusconi's "new-broom-sweeps-clean" party, this was a crushing accusation.

Rival magazines dismissed the scoop. "Berlusconi has been considering replacing [Panorama editor in chief Andrea] Monti for some time with somebody closer to him politically," says Leo Sisti, a leading investigative journalist for the rival newsweekly L'Espresso. "This scoop was actually a way for Monti to make it difficult to fire him."

Liana Milella, author of the article, which was based on newly released Mafia wiretaps, was irritated by the elaborate plotweaving of her journalistic rivals. "Look, you can't commission a scoop," she said. "We found this material, spoke to Monti about it on the Tuesday, wrote the article on Wednesday, and printed on Thursday. The only thing Monti wanted to know was where the documents came from, and were they authentic. Whether Monti had ulterior motives in his heart, I don't know. But he hired me as an investigative journalist, not as a puppet."

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