13 Censorship and Media Ownership in Italy in the Era of Berlusconi Abstract What We Can Learn About Media Ownership and Politic

GMJ: Mediterranean Edition 9(1) Spring 2014 13 Censorship and media ownership in Italy in the Era of Berlusconi Massimo Ragnedda Abstract What we can learn about media ownership and political discourse in general through the lens of the Italian media system? The article looks at the rise of Berlusconi’s media empire and its impact on the country’s people, ethics and customs. The new deal inaugurated in Italy since 1994 when Berlusconi won his first political election, is well known as “Berlusconismo”. This new system is a sort of political, cultural and economic regime in Italy, wedding a populist and neoliberal regime. The aim is to see how it is possible to combine censorship and democracy using as example Berlusconi’s contemporary regime. The article proposes a classification of seven different types of censorship observed during Berlusconi’s governments. Some of these forms are directly linked to the totalitarian censorship, while others are emerging in a new form in a democratic system. This mix of old and new forms of censorship are typical of ‘Berlusconismo’. Introduction Why have Italians so long tolerated the scandals and policies of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, and is there a tipping point for Italians? This article examines Berlusconi’s rise and longevity, despite a string of sex scandals and accusations of corruption. This article tries to understand what we can learn about media ownership, censorship and political discourse in general through the lens of the Italian media system. This is an important issue because understanding what happens in Italy helps us to see what could happen elsewhere in the world, in similar circumstances. The Italian case could, and in some ways already does, influence other democracies: the greater role that the mass media play in the way political debate is covered; the personalization of politics; the consequences of an accentuated process of the commercialization of television (Ginsborg 2004) and, finally, populism (Tarchi 2003). It is worth noting that the Italian political arena has historically functioned – from Machiavelli to Mussolini, Gramsci to Berlusconi – as an experimental laboratory to test and try new models of social order. In other words, the Italian case is a dangerous precedent and it has consequences far beyond Italy. To begin, this article focuses on the rise of Silvio Berlusconi’s media empire and its impact on the country’s people, ethics and customs. Berlusconi won his first political election in Italy in 1994 and a new deal was inaugurated. This new deal is a political, cultural and economic regime in Italy that combines populism and neoliberalism, well known as ‘Berlusconismo’. Essentially, this article examines the situation in Italy, but it is suggested that Berlusconismo, intended both as “social phenomenon” and as “thought movement”, is also a possibility in other countries where the accumulation of media capital in a small number of hands coincides with neoliberal policies. The main focus of this article is the techniques employed by Berlusconi’s regime to remove images and words that may be considered objectionable or could damage Berlusconi’s image. This focus is based on a conventional definition of censorship as the deletion of information considered dangerous, inconvenient or potentially damaging to the government or media organizations (Burt, 1994; Butler, 1998; Kuhn, 1998; Holquist, 1994; Jansen, 1991). Censorship’s aim is to prevent the public from being informed about something that the censor thinks is harmful or inopportune and ‘it includes both overt and covert proscription and prescriptions’ (Jansen, 1991: 221). Therefore, censorship places pressure upon the principled connection between journalism and freedom of speech. Censorship is not, however, the exclusive prerogative of dictatorships or of authoritarian regimes. Forms of censorship continue even in free societies (Petley, 2007, 2009), though GMJ: Mediterranean Edition 9(1) Spring 2014 14 there is a generalized condemnation of censorship in western societies. Moreover, in western societies both the left and right wing adopt the same anti-censorship rhetoric and ‘both sides say they are against censorship and for diversity: each side accuses the other of trying to exercise censorship’ (Burt, 1994: xv). The first section explores, conceptually, Berlusconi’s political rise and its connections with his media empire. The Italian state regime during Berlusconi’s governments (from 1994 to 1995, from 2001 to 2006, and from 2008 to 2011) was in the contradictory position of representing both the private interests of those in power and the interests of the public at large. This is what it is called the ‘Italian anomaly’: an exceptional situation where a single man can directly or indirectly control most of the national media and, simultaneously, be the prime minister. As the OSCE report stated, after its visit in Italy: “In a democracy, it is incompatible to be both in command of news media and to hold a public post” (Haraszti, 2005). This situation has motivated Freedom House, in each of its reports from 2009 to 2013, to classify Italy as having one of the lowest levels of press freedom in Europe. Indeed, along with Turkey, Italy was considered one of only two European countries whose media are described as being only ‘partly free’. Following Silvio Berlusconi’s resignation as prime minister in November 2011, the 2012 Freedom House report stated that ‘Italy’s civil liberties rating improved from 2 to 1 due to a reduction in the concentration of state and private media outlets’ (Freedom House, 2012). However, Italy is still described in the 2013 report as ‘partly free’, because it suffers from an unusually high concentration of media ownership, distorting of one of the vital mechanisms of any democracy, specifically the pluralism and freedom of information. At the centre of the discussion in the second section will be an analysis of Berlusconi’s regime, its activities aimed at controlling and influencing the media, and its apparatus of censorship. Provocatively, we can say that Berlusconi plays the role of the new censor, which gives to him more power. In the third and final section of the article, the main core, I will propose a classification of seven different types of censorship observed during Berlusconi’s governments. Some of these forms are directly linked to totalitarian censorship, while others are emerging in a new form in a democratic system. This mix of old and new forms of censorship is emblematic of ‘Berlusconismo’, seen as demagogic populism form by the opponents, and compared to the Argentine Peronism or the French Gaullism by his supporters. Finally, some conclusions will be drawn and further discussion will be raised. The Italian Anomaly What makes Italy an anomalous country and Berlusconi unique in Europe is not the individual media control of an important quota of the national media – something similar exist in France with Vivendi, in UK with Murdoch or in Germania with Bertelsmann and Kirch – but it is a combination of political power and media conglomerates. This is the uniqueness of Italy. There are developing literatures in the social sciences that address both international political concern regarding the development of the Berlusconismo in Italy and the possibility of its spreading elsewhere. There are also a number of books that examine aspects of Berlusconi’s regime, for example: Ginsborg (2004) focuses on Berlusconi’s control of TV as central to his influence; Stille (2007) focuses on the cultural contradictions of Berlusconi and contemporary society; Shin and Agnew (2008) utilize a spatial analysis of Berlusconi’s political influence in Italy; Young (2010) writes from the point of view of an economic analyst. Other books published at the beginning of Berlusconi’s ascent have analyzed his controversial origins, such as: Veltri & Travaglio (2001), a provocative book on Berlusconi’s political history, describing the intertwining of politics, the mafia, business and television that GMJ: Mediterranean Edition 9(1) Spring 2014 15 has accompanied Berlusconi’s success both as entrepreneur and politician; Ruggeri (1994); Fracassi and Gambino’s (1994; 1995); Bocca (2002). There have also been articles that focus on his political and media power, such as: Statham (1996), who examines how the control and use of communications resources has contributed to making new right (Berlusconi and his allies) members of the political establishment of the Italian Second Republic; the articles of Italian scholars Della Porta and Vannucci (1995) and Campus (2010), which articles focus on the construction of political leadership driven by communication strategies with greater emphasis on image over substance and personality over ideology. What is important here is to analyze his political rise and his connections with his media empire. Silvio Berlusconi, a brilliant salesman who has reinvented politics and state management (Jones, 2003), won political elections in Italy three times: from 1994 to 1995; from 2001 to 2006; from 2008 to 2011. Furthermore, in 2013 he formed a national coalition with the centre-left and therefore did not lose this election. He won the elections for a number of reasons and although being the owner of a media monopoly may be one of the main reasons, it is not the only one (Mancini 1997). Below, we will briefly identify five different reasons that could justify the rise and the longevity of the Berlusconismo. Unfortunately, due to the parameters of this article, there is not enough space to explain all reasons in detail. The most important factor, around which all others factors revolve, is his media empire where he controls almost all of Italian television, either directly or indirectly. The quasi- monopoly of the media is a fundamental tool for the Berlusconismo that requires special and continuous propaganda to defend the Berlusconi government and his operatives and to somewhat subtly support the favourable environment and the cultural milieu in which he operates.

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