Hear no evil, report no evil
By Diana Russo Posted Apr 1 2006
AP Photo/ Corrado Giambalvo
Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi controls an estimated 90 percent of Italian television through his family's ownership of three commercial channels and three public stations, RAI 1, RAI 2 and RAI 3.
In 2004, the watchdog group Freedom House demoted Italy’s press ranking from “free” to “partly free,” the same as Kuwait, India and Mongolia. Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has control over an estimated 90 percent of Italian television through the direct control of his family’s ownership of three commercial channels and indirect control of RAI. Despite the monopoly, a few outspoken members of the media are speaking out against censorship, though they disagree whether it is primarily imposed by the government or self-imposed.
Berlusconi’s prospects for re-election this April appear shaky, despite being prime minister since 2001 and having control over a majority of the media. The Berlusconi family owns the advertising agency Publitalia, which controls 60 percent of the television ad market; Italy’s largest publishing house, Mondadori; the news weekly Panorama and two daily newspapers.
Berlusconi’s personal fortune is estimated at $10 billion to $14 billion, and he is the world’s seventh-richest man, according to the ANSA English Media Service.
A new documentary, Viva Zapatero, protesting government-sponsored censorship tells the story of how comedian Sabina Guzzanti’s television show satirizing Italian politics was cancelled by the government network RAI 2. Viva Zapatero opened in Europe last fall at the Cannes and Venice Film Festivals. Guzzanti’s Viva Zapatero takes aim not only at Berlusconi but also at opposition leaders, who have done little to offset the conflicts of interest at RAI.
On the other hand, the producer of the hard-hitting Report says the censorship starts with the journalists, not Berlusconi’s alleged “videocracy.” Milena Gabanelli believes the lack of in-depth reporting throughout the country is because of reporters’ self-censorship and their unwillingness to ask the tough questions.
Gabanelli said in a recent interview that the problem goes beyond Berlusconi’s apparent monopoly to unwillingness on the part of journalists to dig deep and to take risks in Italian television news.
“I don’t believe there is another country in the world in which such control over so much of the media is concentrated in one person,” says Gabanelli. “If the news media are so miserable and journalists so little valued, it is not Berlusconi’s fault. It is because the journalists themselves are attached to little privileges. Politicians are not used to being interviewed in a strong way.”
Report is on RAI 3, the most independent of the three RAI channels, which have traditionally been divided up along political lines. RAI 1 and RAI 2 remain relatively center right while RAI 3 is viewed as the opposition channel.
English historian Paul Ginsborg of the University of Florence says the daily publishing of Auditel ratings has forced RAI to compete with commercial TV on its own terms, producing “a deeply conformist, repetitive and uncritically consumer-oriented television system.”
Ginsborg notes that over the years, RAI has been filled with talk shows and histrionics that take the place of analysis and has aired more variety shows than documentaries. “All this demonstrated that Italian television was deeply lazy,” says Ginsborg. “It was also self-referential, a phenomenon which (novelist) Umberto Eco describes as ‘neo television.’”
Steering clear of the controversial and cozying up to sources is a temptation for journalists everywhere. However, Gabanelli contends the problem is endemic to Italian culture.
“Basically there is a general lack of responsibility in this culture,” she says. “Nobody does his or her job the right way. People say, ‘My neighbor only works one hour a day. Why should I work 10? Instead of getting angry at corrupt officials, we try to imitate their practices.”
An award-winning reporter and war correspondent who worked freelance for many years, Gabanelli introduced a new form to Italian television in 1991 when she stopped working with a crew in order to go out on her own with a video camera.
“The image is not as clear, but it is more natural, more direct,” Gabanelli says. “The person you are interviewing feels more at ease, and it is more practical. You can rush anywhere quickly.”
In 1997, Gabanelli created Report with a determined group of six freelancers who contribute in-depth, intensely documented investigative video reports. The program is known for its incredibly thorough investigations of issues ranging from industrial pollution to political corruption, a notoriously lax legal system and mafia payoffs.
“Report is in the first to place a thorn in the side of Italian TV journalism so inclined to chit-chat and disinclined to displease political officials,” says Corriere della Sera columnist Aldo Grasso. “(Gabanelli) occupies an empty space and is cut out from the mold of Captain Courageous.”
Gabanelli attributes Report’s intensity to its unique approach to production: part internal, part external. “We assign stories according to people’s talents, provide logistical support and work with them step by step,” she says. “They are freelancers but have the authority of the show behind them; our letterhead can get them the interview.”
The resulting flexibility and cost savings allow the show to devote an average of four months to each investigative effort. It also helps guarantee the show’s independence.
“We do not have this fear of embarrassing the interviewee as do so many Italian journalists because we have no patrons to thank,” says Gabanelli. “We obtain information from secret informers. Then we use that information to formulate our questions to the people involved.”
Report has survived relatively untouched despite a series of RAI censorship flaps that occurred earlier in Berlusconi’s administration. In 2002, satirist Daniele Lutazzi and two popular RAI news reporters, 30-year veteran Enzo Biagi and Michele Santoro, were fired. Berlusconi accused them of “making criminal use” of state television to cut into his margin of victory in the 2001 election. Biagi and Santoro later refused RAI’s offer to reinstate them on its own terms. In 2004, Daniela Tagliafico, deputy of RAI 1’s news program, resigned, citing censorship and distortion of content.
In spite of the intensity of her show’s approach, Gabanelli says she has never felt pressure from RAI 3 to hold back. “There are discussions about particular words, maybe; we might agree that it might be better to use this word instead of that one, but nothing more.”
She says Report’s emphasis on accuracy and willingness to work closely with RAI’s legal staff has earned the confidence of both the network and public. “We always remember that we are not allowed to make a mistake,” she says.
To Gabanelli, this thoroughness is what sets her show apart from those who sit by and decry censorship. “It is easy to say you can’t do things because they don’t allow you to because in that way you can do nothing,” she says. “Good reporting has to have a point of view and you have to be willing to hurt people and face the courts if necessary.”
Now facing an uphill re-election battle, Berlusconi is becoming more ingenious than ever in his attempts to shape laws that will favor his media empire and political prospects.
He attempted to weaken and abolish “par condicio,” a 2000 law aimed at giving political parties equal media access during run-up elections. Berlusconi favors making access proportional to party size and election turnout. However, parliament dissolved before the law could be altered.
There have also been signs that Berlusconi is pursuing more ownership of the print media. The 2004 Gasparri Law will allow greater cross-ownership of broadcast and print media beginning in 2009. The law also redefines the ad market in a way that benefits Berlusconi’s interests. In April 2004, the European Parliament published a report citing “the anomaly inherent in the combination of political, economic and media power in the hands of one man.”
In August 2005, London’s The Independent reported rumors that Berlusconi was attempting a backdoor takeover of Corriere della Sera, Italy’s most-respected and highest-circulation daily. Roman real estate agent Stefano Ricucci and other business people close to Berlusconi were buying up shares in the company that owns the paper. Berlusconi has denied any attempt at a takeover.
Meanwhile, in the months since the release of Viva Zapatero, more journalists and critics are coming out against Berlusconi.
In October 2005, popular entertainer Adriano Celentano launched a three-hour variety show, Rockpolitik, that railed against censorship and showcased blacklisted news people and performers. The first episode received near-record ratings. Celentano received advance guarantees from RAI not to censor content, which resulted in calls from the right for the resignation of RAI’s Director General, Alfredo Meocci.
The Berlusconi-owned Il Gironale headlined its front-page story “RAI Pays to be Put on Trial by Celentano” while Rome’s left wing La Repubblica noted that: “For one night, at least, we had the sense of a free country,” thanks to Celantano.
Then in November, RAI 3 ran a documentary, Fallujah, The Concealed Massacre, which dealt with the United States’ use of white phosphorous and napalm in Iraq against combatants and civilians. It was based on accounts gathered from Fallujah refugees by Manifesto reporter Guiliana Sgrena, who was kidnapped there in February 2005.
For Gabanelli, such bold moves are “the exceptions that confirm the rule.” “In Italy the press and television can do what they want. The problem is auto-censorship,” she says.
Jeff Israely, the Rome correspondent for Time magazine, has an interesting take on Berlusconi’s falling fortunes. “The impact of Berlusconi’s media potentially can tell us much about the big questions of political and media cohabitation that relate to what we all see throughout the West,” says Israely. “I remain today as scandalized as I was when I first realized what he owned and controlled while setting out to rule the country.
“But the twist is not that he didn’t interfere, or that his stations weren’t partisan, he did and they were but obviously (given his likely defeat in his re-election bid) it hasn’t really worked. Maybe so long as you’re in an otherwise relatively healthy democracy, manipulating the media isn’t as easy as it may look. Maybe any publicity is not good publicity—or to put it another way—if people just get angry when they see your face (because the real policies that count were insufficient, unpopular) what good is it to have control of the media to flash your Cheshire grin all day long?”
And Gabanelli agrees. “Politically controlling six TV channels does not mean controlling the heads of the people who work there or the reaction of the people who are struggling to get to the end of the month with their wages,” she says.