silvio b's corruption of the state owned media is not much different from the corruption of PBS, for example, by our own right wing congress. only the latter is much more under reported for obvious reasons.
italia still has equal time laws -- something the USA is suffering mightily for revoking. one of the tricks berlusconi pulled is to make sure he appear for a full program on state TV all by himself, fielding powder puff questions just like those launched at shrub by US media, his role model. then giving the opposition parties their own program together to argue the issues in "equal time." he's a peach.
berlusconi has his own media empire, a la rupert murdoch, in addition to state TV. he's extremely wealthy. his media empire serves as a propaganda machine for his financial and political interests.
as a point of interest, berlusconi was a socialist many years ago, believe it or not. a parallel with benito m. only benito's socialist party was very different from silvio's. there's little doubt silvio changed party affiliations long ago for self-serving financial reasons.
R
----- Original Message ----- From: "dano" <dano at well.com> To: <lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org> Sent: Wednesday, June 16, 2004 6:51 AM Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] more on italian elections
At 3:43 PM -0700 6/15/04, R wrote:
> He [Berlusconi] was resoundingly defeated in one area (central - where
Rome
>is) by a famous woman journalist, Lilli Gruber, he had had "expelled" from
>our state television channels because, while transmitting from Iraq, she
had
>made some faux pas like calling the rebel forces "resistance" forces, the
>allied presence an "occupation," and the coalition army the "invading"
army.
>She got the most votes of any candidate in the elections - around 700,000
in
>one area where she was a candidate and 300,000 in another. Another
>journalist who was banned from state TV because his talk programs were too
>politically oriented to the left, Michele Santoro, got 400,000 votes where
>he was a candidate. He told the press (I'll translate): "My success and
>that of Lilli Gruber give value to the fact that we are conducting a battle
>for freedom of expression, and this same impression is also present in the
>public opinion."
Is this "state TV" one of the channels owned by Berlusconi? ___________________________________ http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk