[A-List] Italy: Berlusconi tightens grip

["Michael Keaney" <michael.keaney@xxxxxx>]

State TV pulls plug on Berlusconi satire

Philip Willan in Rome
Friday October 11, 2002
The Guardian

The Italian state television service has banned an item on Silvio Berlusconi
in a satirical television series, adding to the fear that the prime minister
is tightening his stranglehold on Italian television and threatening freedom
of speech.

The episode of the programme Blob was due to be broadcast on Tuesday.

Blob has become well known for applying comic editing to previously
broadcast footage.

The banned episode is the third in a series devoted to the prime minister
and media mogul's communication skills.

It was pulled at the last minute on the orders of the director general of
the RAI network.

Opposition politicians denounced it as censorship and said it was the latest
in a series of attempts to stifle critical voices in the media.

Last spring Mr Berlusconi called for the removal of two leading television
journalists, Enzo Biagi and Michele Santoro, and since then RAI - whose
directors are appointed by the Berlusconi-controlled parliament - has not
featured them in its programmes.

"Between management errors and political censorship, this board is dragging
state television into its worst crisis in at least 10 years," the opposition
leader Francesco Rutelli said.

Critics add that RAI has been losing viewers, to the advantage of Mediaset,
the group of three commercial channels owned by Mr Berlusconi

"When television is censored on the orders of the head of the government and
ministers, what word can you use to describe the situation other than
regime?" the Left Democrat MP Gloria Buffo said.

Agostino Sacca, the RAI director general, said the programme was giving
viewers an overdose of Mr Berlusconi, and could end up favouring him by
making him appear a victim.

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Uproar as bill set to get Berlusconi off graft hook
By Tony Barber in Rome
Financial Times; Oct 11, 2002

Italy's parliament lastnight passed a judicial reform bill that is expected
to trigger the collapse of the last important trial in which Silvio
Berlusconi, the prime minister and billionaire businessman, is accused of
corruption.

Uproar erupted in the Chamber of Deputies, the lower house of parliament, as
the parties in Mr Berlusconi's centre-right coalition used their majority to
push through the legislation by a majority of 307 to 253.

Opposition deputies unfurled the Italian flag, waved a banner proclaiming
"Shame" and sang "Bella Ciao", an anti-fascist resistance song from the
1940s. Mr Berlusconi's supporters responded by singing the national anthem.
The speaker of parliament suspended the session.

Mr Berlusconi is on trial in Milan charged with bribing judges in the 1980s
to win control of SME, then a state-owned food company. The new legislation
allows defendants to ask for their trial to be moved to a different city if
there is a "legitimate suspicion" that the judges hearing the case are
biased.

Mr Berlusconi , who is Italy's richest man, has long complained that Milan's
magistrates have a leftwing bias and are out to destroy his political
career.

Because the legislation can force trials to be restarted from scratch, a
process that can take years in Italy, its effect will almost certainly be to
cause the abandonment of Mr Berlusconi's trial, lawyers said.

The SME case is the last serious case hanging over the prime minister, who
has already been acquitted under the statute of limitations in three other
criminal trials. Before it takes effect, the legislation must be approved by
the Senate, parliament's upper house. But this is considered a formality,
since the government commands a majority there.

Opposition legislators alleged that the bill was a glaring example of how
the centre-right government, which came to power last year, had spent its
time on matters related to Mr Berlusconi's political and financial
interests.