Quotes of the Day

Anyone tuned into the nightly prime-time TV show Blob might easily conclude that despite Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's virtual stranglehold on television broadcasting, the media in Italy have a free run. Blob , the creation of eccentric film buff turned TV maven Enrico Ghezzi, offers one of Italy's best shows by pasting together clips from some of its worst. Five excruciating seconds of a half-naked, singing showgirl segues into 30 seconds of politicians shouting each other down, which cuts to the day's sappiest moment from a low-budget soap. Into this kaleidoscope of bad taste Ghezzi inserts a few news highlights, often including Berlusconi's gaffes, stutters, tirades and unfulfilled campaign promises. Ghezzi repeats them over and over again, to tragicomic effect.

But according to the Prime Minister's growing crowd of critics, Blob and a few other shows amount to just token opposition in a media landscape increasingly controlled by Berlusconi. Five of the seven major networks are either owned by him or controlled by his allies. His other assets include Mondadori publishing and Il Giornale, his Milan-based newspaper. Nearly two years since sweeping into office with a pledge to resolve his numerous media-related conflicts, Berlusconi now appears dead-set against ceding control for the duration of his five-year term. Free speech — both in practice and as a democratic value — seems to be a collateral casualty.

For Berlusconi, Italy's richest man, conflict and contradiction come naturally. In another part of his complex world he is fighting charges that he bribed judges in a case connected to the state's sale of a food conglomerate. So it's not surprising that he shows no signs of giving in, or of selling off his media outlets. Nor is he rushing to fulfill a campaign pledge to implement a system of independent controls on these holdings. In fact, Berlusconi seems bent on expansion. Fininvest, the Berlusconi family holding company, bought shares in several banks and raised its stake in the Spanish network, Telecinco, to 52% from 40%. In early February, the Prime Minister's oldest daughter, Marina — a vice president of Fininvest — was named boss at Mondadori, Italy's largest publishing house.

Opposition leader Francesco Rutelli last week cited what he says is another glaring conflict: a Feb. 11 lunch Berlusconi had with Rupert Murdoch in the midst of the Australian tycoon's bid to expand his Italian cable TV holdings. Rutelli smells a backroom deal and vowed to begin a parliamentary battle to force the ruling center-right majority to put some teeth into its proposed conflict advisory board.

Berlusconi's running of the state-owned RAI network has drawn the harshest criticism. The Feb. 15 antiwar march in Rome, which drew more than a million people protesting the Prime Minister's pro-U.S. position, was not covered live as is usually the case for rallies of such importance. The decision again spotlit RAI 's troubled board, whose seats are traditionally divvied up among majority and opposition Members of Parliament. Only board president Antonio Baldassarre and another center-right loyalist remain. Three others quit in November to protest Baldassarre's leadership and alleged partisanship.

Sandro Bondi, spokesman for Berlusconi's Forza Italia party, said RAI's leadership is more independent than ever, though he conceded that "politics continues to influence the world of television." Those influences, says one veteran RAI reporter, include all the old tricks of warping coverage to favor the incumbents — only jacked up exponentially under Berlusconi. The subterfuge ranges from politicians placing calls to news directors to get favorable coverage to the "sandwich technique," in which soundbites are edited to give the first and last word — when viewers pay most attention — to the government side. More worryingly, several popular talk-show hosts have had their slots canceled after Berlusconi publicly criticized them.

Even Ghezzi himself was censored, when RAI pulled the plug on a Blob special series featuring only Berlusconi. The argument was that the show presented one-sided satire. Ghezzi reveled in the fact that undoctored clips of Berlusconi alone were considered satire. "It was the ultimate triumph," he says. Yet Ghezzi wonders if eventually Berlusconi's media control will hurt him. When the public sees too much of a politician, he says, eventually it may come to hate him: "We know that television has great power, but we still don't know how it works." One thing we do know is that politicians will do their best to make it work for them.

• JEFF ISRAELY | Rome
• Does Italy's Prime Minister have too much control over what people see?