Word: primed
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...discussion of what's wrong with Italian politics eventually leads to the question of what's wrong with the country's media. In a nation where the Prime Minister controls the airwaves, only one out of 10 people buys a daily paper, compared with one in five Americans and three in five people in Japan, according to the World Association of Newspapers. Italians, it seems, don't care to read the news...
While much has been made of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's grip on Italian television - he owns three of the biggest commercial stations and in his role as Premier has influence over state broadcaster RAI - the country's printed press has its own conflicts of interest. The Fiat holding group has controlling stakes in Milan daily Corriere della Sera and Turin-based La Stampa. Daily La Repubblica is owned by Carlo De Benedetti, a business rival of Berlusconi's with interests in energy, automobiles and health care. Il Sole 24 Ore, the country's financial paper, is owned by Italy...
Direct government influence is not out of the question in modern Italy, either. In June, Berlusconi urged companies not to buy space in publications "that sing the songs of dissatisfaction and catastrophe" - a reference to newspapers covering the salacious allegations surrounding the Prime Minister's personal life. "Would this be accepted in any other corner of the world?" asks Levi. "The Prime Minister telling companies where to place their...
Beleaguered Scottish Justice Minister Kenny MacAskill insisted he alone freed al-Megrahi, but suspicions are likely to linger--especially given the West's careful wooing of Gaddafi since international sanctions ended in 2004. Within hours of a visit to Libya by then Prime Minister Tony Blair in 2007, Britain's BP inked a $900 million oil-and-gas-exploration deal. More recently, in July, Prime Minister Gordon Brown met Gaddafi during the G-8 summit in Italy. And a week before al-Megrahi's release, John McCain led a group of fellow Senators in trade talks with Gaddafi, tweeting...
...scandals sets off another round of ribald accounts of Berlusconi's private life. The latest suit was filed Wednesday against another left-leaning Italian daily, L'Unita, which had referred to a comedienne's sketch about Berlusconi allegedly taking medical injections that allow him to have sex. The Prime Minister's attorney, Niccolo Ghedini, explained to the daily Corriere della Sera on Friday that if necessary Berlusconi would testify in the libel case to prove that he is not impotent: "And why shouldn't Berlusconi be allowed to explain to 20 million Italians, his enamored supporters, that he is perfectly...