Long Hot Summer
Yes, it’s going to be one long hot summer for Italy’s tanned prime minister. At the moment he’s trying to fend off an embarassingly official accusation deriving from the White House, of all places.
This accusation hints that Italy is a country infamous for corrupt government practices. Shock horror!
And that’s not all, according to an unofficial press kit distributed to journalists on Air Force One, Berlusco is also something of a political novice. This political novice, otherwise known as Silvio Berlusconi, continues the text of the press kit, only managed to become Italian prime minsiter thanks to his notable influence on Italy’s media.
This unbelievably frank assessment of Italy’s richest ever prime minister did not top there. Oh no. It went on to state that Berlusconi is hated by many! However, it’s not all negative, the kit does point out that Berlusco is respected for his ability to exploit ‘bella figura’ to good effect.
At least this is not a bad thing to say about Berlusconi the former puppet show promoter. Yes, the press briefing happens to mention that the tanned one used to make a few extra dollars by selling tickets to puppet shows he organised.
Italy’s biggest entrepreneur started off young, or so it would seem, and one doubts that the CIA have got their facts wrong. Other indications of budding entrepreneurial spirit highlighted in this gem of a text, which was taken from the recently updated ‘Encyclopedia of World Biography’, are that Berlusco sold vacuum cleaners and did writing tasks for his fellow students while he was at university. He charged a fee for this service, naturally.
This officially painted and not too flattering portrait of Silvio, has led to the eruption of a mini-storm between White House representatives and Berlusconi’s boys, as you might imagine. And all on the eve of the G8!
The White House has tried to wriggle out of this incident, but, one fears, the damage has already been done.
‘Et tu Brute?’, is probably how Berluco opened a telephone conversation between himself and Bush, one supposes!
Boy, would I loved to have tapped that call!
The question is: Will Mr B now bring a case for defamation against Bush? No chance! The case would have to be heard in the USA, and even Berlusco, powerful though he may be, would not be able to wield enough of his influence to have a case heard in the US of A watered down.
Maybe Berlusconi should spend this year’s long hot summer cooling down by the pool at his villa in Sardinia. He could even have Mara Carfagna over to help him make some policy decisions and decide how to tackle what could turn out to be a very long and cold winter.
Here is a link to the Encyclopedia of World Biography entry which has caused such a stink: Berlusconi, Silvio - click early - it won’t be there for long!
Is Press Freedom about to be Limited in Italy?
Not too long ago, in fact just after Berlusconi won the elections, I spoke to a journalist who works for a major Italian newspaper, and this journalist told me that he and many of his colleagues were worrying about clamp downs on press freedom in Italy.
Well, it’s looking as though this hack’s fears were well grounded, and just recently an Italian TV presenter who runs an political chat show called Anno Zero has been accused of bringing the Italian national broadcaster RAI into disrepute.
What apparently happened, and I, alas, missed this controversial chat show, was that Michele Santoro, the journalist who runs the Genova chat show gave some airtime to the ever critical Beppe Grillo. The Grillo speech which was shown included an attack on journalists, Italy’s president and doctors .
The attack on the president which was considered oh so insidious was basically that Napolitano, the President of Italy, should be the president of the country, and not of the political parties that run the country. Grillo, never one to hold back, insinuated that Napolitano did not allow the referendum on Italy’s electoral system to go ahead before the general elections because he was in league with the politicos. The irascible comic from Genova came up with rather a crude analogy, as he stated that holding the elections before having held the election was like putting a condom on after having had sex.
After having said naughty things about the president, good old Beppe went on to say that he wanted to see a newspaper paid for by those who read it, not by certain ’sponsors’. This is a direct reference to the fact that newspapers in Italy have always been the voice of the controlling power mongers, and not, as in other countries, controlled by those who simply wish the make lots of cash from providing a news service - read Murdoch.
Grillo also points out that the Italian journalists’ association, which was set up back in Mussolini’s day, is more of an organisation designed to keep journalist in check than to promote the freedom of the press. The comic also mentioned one Beppe Alfano an Italian journalist who met his fate, reputedly, at the hands of the mafia.
Last but by no means least came Grillo’s assault on Italy’s doctors. Well, one in particular, a certain Umberto Veronesi, who also doubles as a politician and is very well regarded in Italy. However, Grillo and a group of Italian skin specialists are not too happy with Veronesi because of his public confirmation that the waste burning incinerators that Italy is proposing to install present no threat to public health. Grillo and the specialists appear to have evidence to the contrary, and so Grillo has concluded that Veronesi is in the pocket of the political and corporate Italian establishment.
Good old Beppe has ruffled quite a few feathers, and Santoro just went and poured salt onto the disturbed feathers by giving Grillo’s insinuation national air time. Claudio Petruccioli, none other than the president of the Italian Rai state TV channels, was one of those to have accused Santoro of having acted shamefully. Not a great surprise when you know that presidents of Italy’s state TV are just about always nominated by the government in power at the time. Petruccioli was one of Prodi’s boys, but it looks as though he’s trying to say that he’s Berlusco friendly too, possibly in the hope of hanging on to his job a little longer.
All these shenanigans would appear to point towards a likely clamp down on press freedom in Italy, again, and Michele Santoro will quite possibly be removed from TV, as he was during Belusconi’s last reign. Santoro probably knows what is in store for him, so one may consider the contraversial eposode of Anno Zero as being something of a swan song.
Incidentally, the Italian Observatory on Legality and Rights (in Italian) has pointed out that RAI president Claudio Petruccioli’s overreacted somewhat, and it went on to say that potential defamation should be challenged by legal means, and not by a journalist’s boss.
I’ll be keeping an eye on this latest tempest in a teacup and writing more when the outcome, such as it may be, becomes clearer.
The political control of the media in Italy does stink a little of the use of the media as propaganda machines during the rule of despots and dictators, such as during Mussolini’s reign, for example.
Burnt Midnight Oil
A little while back I was asked to prepare a short two day workshop on how to write a press release in English for the Media Relations master at the business school where I often find myself.
After burning copious amounts of that old midnight oil, I came up with such a course.
The first time this course was held was quite a nerve racking experience and I remember feeling much like an actor appearing on his first night. I really had no idea as to how my course would go down. Even though I was fairly sure that I had covered almost everything, and come up with a method that was thorough but, at the same time, quite straight forward. I had even come up with a way, I hoped, of getting the most out of a large group of people with widely differing levels of knowledge of English.
At the end of the day though, I had never really done anything as extensive as this. So how did the course go? Read more
Is Blogging a Form of Journalism?
A good question, and quite a few real ‘journalists’ would disagree that bloggers, for the most part, can claim to be journalists, even if some journalists are bloggers.
Oddly enough, one of the definitions of the word ‘journalist‘ is “a person who keeps a journal, diary, or other record of daily events.” In many ways, this is what quite a few bloggers actually do.
The definition counts me out though, this blog is not really a record of daily events.
Am I a ‘Bloggist’? A term which corrupts even further the origin of the word ‘blog’, which is ‘web’ and ‘log’ spliced together, in much the same way as ‘brunch’, ‘podcast’ and ‘webcast’ have managed to marry other common words.
I’m sure there are others, but they won’t spring to mind.
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