By Mark Thompson
The political capture of national television news in Italy has been alleged and debated for many years. Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi dominates broadcasting to a degree that is unique in western Europe and has few parallels anywhere on the continent.
He is the owner of Mediaset, Italy’s most powerful private broadcaster; and, by virtue of his political position, he exerts great influence over RAI, the public service broadcaster. Together, RAI and Mediaset control around 80 percent of television audience ratings.
Yet, despite the accusations and counter-accusations about editorial control, there has been little systematic analysis of the ways in which national broadcasters report on political life. While the scandals surrounding the prime minister himself have been covered exhaustively, the editorial consequences of the ‘Italian anomaly’ have hardly been examined.
To address this gap, the OS Media Program commissioned the Osservatorio di Pavia to analyse the news coverage of events in autumn 2010. The events concern Emma Marcegaglia, president of Italy’s association of industrialists, who was apparently targeted by a newspaper owned by the Berlusconi family, shortly after she had criticized the government’s handling of the economy.
The results of this analysis confirm that editorial differences between national TV news bulletins, covering this episode, reflected the politics of ownership and control. The two most watched news bulletins are TGI on Rai Uno, the first channel of the public service broadcaster; and TG5, on Mediaset’s Canale 5.
Together, these bulletins attract almost twice as many viewers as the third, fourth and fifth most popular newscasts combined. And, in their coverage of the Marcegaglia episode, TG1 and TG5 emphasised “the uncontroversial aspects of the story while playing down those aspects that are particularly critical of the government.
In this type of coverage, Marcegaglia’s position is often reduced or minimised.” Read more… (This report partners the Italy report in the OSF’s “Mapping Digital Media” project, which will be published in October on www.soros.org and here on www.mediapolicy.org.)
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Summary of the report: The Marcegaglia Dossier: News or Threat?