Word: berlusconis
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Union leaders had been touting Saturday's massive march on the capital as a "grand party." Rock bands, celebrities and local theater groups would add spice to the already fired-up movement arrayed against the labor reforms proposed by Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's government. Though the crowds came, by most estimates well over a million people, the festivities were called off. Banners denouncing terrorism replaced union slogans calling for walkouts. Across the oval field at the ancient Circus Maximus, a strong wind whipped at red trade-union flags taped with the black borders of mourning. Once again in sunny...
...much to disagree with there. But while common purpose was being espoused in Brussels, Umberto Bossi, head of Italy's once-separatist Northern League and part of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's governing coalition, was characterizing the E.U. as a "Stalinist European super state, the Soviet Union of the West." Meanwhile in Germany, the sputtering economic engine of Europe, the exigencies of an election campaign are re-intensifying the lively tradition of blaming Brussels. Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, having quashed a European Commission warning letter over his government's mounting deficit, appears ready to wage his domestic campaign against...
...about to exert his will over the public airwaves. The government is slated this week to name a new board of directors for RAI, the Italian state broadcaster and only true competitor of Berlusconi's Mediaset channels. "This will ensure Berlusconi's control, directly or indirectly, of the whole national television system," says Peppino Ortoleva, professor of communications at the University of Siena. The task of choosing the five-member RAI board is in the hands of the president of the Italian Senate and speaker of the lower house of Parliament, both firm Berlusconi loyalists. The leading candidate to head...
...press conference with foreign journalists in Rome last Thursday, opposition leader Francesco Rutelli blasted Berlusconi, comparing his control of information in Italy to Leonid Brezhnev's in the 1970s Soviet Union. But Rutelli and his allies - who tried in vain to make conflict of interest a pivotal campaign issue last spring - are still having trouble convincing the Italian public that there is much to worry about. rai's impending change of the guard is old news in Italy, where the state broadcaster's board - as well as top newsroom posts and even minor acting jobs - have long been divvied...
...broadcasting scene, with his Canale 5 show more likely to be critical of its top shareholder than two of the three rai stations. A RAI reporter who requested anonymity said that most people inside the industry believe the public stations are becoming more beholden to the government than their Berlusconi-owned competitors. "The atmosphere inside rai is atrocious," said the state TV reporter. Still, the private network has its own inherent limits: Mediaset's vice president is the Prime Minister's son, Piersilvio Berlusconi. Mentana thinks Berlusconi Sr. should unload his TV holdings. "It would certainly be better...