Word: mediaset
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Maybe. Kirch's empire, of which KirchMedia is only a part, is foundering under debts of $5.7 billion. Its creditors include some of Germany's biggest banks as well as foreign media empires, such as Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. and Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's Mediaset. The law gives new management 90 days to come up with an operating plan under "self-administration," similar to the Chapter 11 bankruptcy provisions in the U.S. "There are more possibilities to save the firm than under the old law," says attorney Peter Neu, who specializes in bankruptcies. "They don't have...
...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...
...newsroom posts and even minor acting jobs - have long been divvied up as political spoils among the factions of both the ruling coalition and opposition. "Most Italians see it as just one conflict among many," said Enrico Mentana, who for 10 years has been the director and anchor of Mediaset's leading nightly news broadcast...
...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 for me," said the anchorman, who has been fending off conflict-of-interest questions since the media baron's entry into politics in 1994. But Mentana...
...election pronunciamento that the cloud of criminal allegations surrounding Berlusconi made him "not fit to lead the government of any country." All you need to do is look at the record. The sheer scale of Berlusconi's financial and business dealings - when the state-owned networks and his own Mediaset empire are taken together, the Prime Minister now effectively controls 90% of Italy's broadcasting - makes it legitimate to ask whether his administration will be able toadhere to traditional democratic restraints on the behavior of those who hold governmental power. (Berlusconi, to be fair, has said he will soon propose...