Berlusconi's U.S. Blues
With elections coming this week, Silvio Berlusconi's popularity is sagging over the economy, Iraq and his alliance with George W. Bush.
BIG SCREEN: Berlusconi gestures during his session at RAI'sn "Porta a Porta" talk show
Silvio Berlusconi's dominance over Italian television news is both obvious and surprisingly subtle. It's hard to miss the fact that he owns three of Italy's seven biggest channels and has indirect control over three more, but sometimes the effects of that can be harder to spot. When the Prime Minister addressed the U.N. General Assembly last September, for example, the news broadcasts on state-run RAI 1 seemed balanced. But viewers didn't know that the cutaway shots of a full-house audience listening to the Italian leader had been spliced in from Secretary-General Kofi Annan's earlier remarks. Berlusconi had given his speech to a nearly empty chamber.
At the time, RAI 1 refused demands to explain the incident. But Paolo Gentiloni, an opposition Parliament member on the commission, calls it a classic application of Berlusconi's "soft power" over content. He doesn't dictate such maneuvers, Gentiloni says; ambitious TV executives lean his way without being told to.
Italian TV has long been political. In the past, though, management of state channels was divided among allies of competing parties. And no Prime Minister owned three private stations. To measure Berlusconi's sway, TIME asked Osservatorio di Pavia, an independent media watchdog that monitors RAI for Parliament, to track the airtime Berlusconi's own TV news shows give to the competing coalitions. The findings: news programs on Berlusconi-owned Mediaset channels gave an average of 81% of speaking time to Berlusconi's coalition in May, compared to the 37% they gave the ruling center-left government in the weeks leading up to the 1999 European election. The survey of RAI found that the public airwaves gave 68% of speaking time to the ruling government in May, roughly the same as the 62% five years ago.
So the picture is more balanced than Berlusconi's critics might presume. The flagship news program on Berlusconi-owned Canale 5, for instance, is the most consistent in dividing time between the government and opposition. The flagship state news on RAI 1 has made a modest move in favor of Berlusconi and his allies, giving them 71% of speaking airtime, compared to the 60% it gave the center-left in 1999. RAI 3, which by tradition was controlled by Italy's Communist Party, still gives abundant airtime to the center-left. Stefano Mosti, who heads the Osservatorio, says knowing who speaks how often "gives an idea of the level of pluralism. But we monitor just one factor. There are others that aren't easy to quantify: how words, images and sounds are used."
The news show on Berlusconi's Rete 4 is an unabashed propaganda machine run by his friend Emilio Fede. Last month it dedicated almost 90% of its political sound bites to the center-right. "I've created a new way of doing news," says Fede. "I say what I believe. I have the courage to declare my convictions out loud."
"What's important," warns Gentiloni, "is that we don't get used to this Italian anomaly. Otherwise it becomes a model. If the head of the government owns the television, you cannot rest easy."
One man resting easy is Fedele Confalonieri, Berlusconi's oldest friend. When the mogul jumped into politics in 1994, he picked Confalonieri to run his Mediaset empire. Confalonieri argues that commercial television is kept pure by competition. "It's a golden rule," he says. "Be fair or else you lose audience." RETE 4 is "a little bit biased," he concedes, but its viewership is much smaller than the more balanced CANALE 5. (Even CANALE 5 shills for the boss: last week it broadcast two long minutes of Berlusconi reading a virtually news-free prepared statement about the importance of standing by the U.S.) "You have a unique situation," Confalonieri concedes. "But there's only one way to resolve it," he says. "Berlusconi must either sell his business holdings or get out of politics." No one expects either to happen any time soon.
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