Berlusconi's country of the clueless
With scant coverage of pillow-talk tapes at home, Italy's PM has created an information culture typical of authoritarian regimes
John Hooper
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 21 July 2009 18.00 BST
Arguably the most striking thing about the Berlusconi tapes is that most Italians know, if at all, only vaguely of their existence.
The fact that the news magazine L'Espresso had posted to its website recordings claimed to have been made by a woman who says she went to bed with him last November in the hope of securing money or influence was just not mentioned on most of last night's TV news bulletins. As far as I can make out, the story was ignored not only by Silvio Berlusconi's own Mediaset channels, but also by the first and second channels of the public broadcasting network, RAI, and by La7, which is owned by Telecom Italia. Together, they account for about two thirds of the audience at that time of night.
It might be objected that, since the recordings and transcripts have been made available on the internet, and since they were reported in the press, it doesn't really matter that TV paid no attention to them. But that ignores two crucial points.
The first is that Italy is among the countries most indifferent to the internet. According to a report in the Guardian last year less than a third of the population had access to the web, and those Italians who were linked up used the internet relatively little. The average for the population as a whole was just two hours a week. This could explain why even Mediaset was happy today to post a story about the tapes to its website (though naturally leading on the claim by Berlusconi's lawyer that they were faked). The second important point is that, even before the arrival of free news on the internet, only about one Italian in every 10 bought a daily paper.
Word of mouth will undoubtedly spread knowledge of the tapes, in the same way that it has spread a generalised realisation that there is a scandal involving the prime minister and women. But rumour and gossip are unlikely to alter the fact that the details of this whole affair, together with its public interest ramifications, remain largely unknown to most people in Italy. That is an important reason why Berlusconi has been able to shrug off calls for his resignation.
The original controversy concerned the accusation levelled by Silvio Berlusconi's wife that he was "consorting with minors", just as it emerged that he had attended the 18th birthday party of an aspiring actress and model, Naomi Letizia. The other day I found myself (not exactly for the first time) having an argument with a Rome taxi driver. It gradually emerged that we were starting from two entirely different standpoints. He had heard Berlusconi's explanation (that the girl was the daughter of an old friend), because it was carried on TV news, and had given the prime minister the benefit of the doubt. But he was quite unaware that Berlusconi's explanation had not stood up to subsequent scrutiny, because that little detail only appeared in some of the newspapers.
What we are seeing in Italy is the emergence of an information culture typical of authoritarian regimes. There are the information haves: they include those who read papers like La Repubblica, Corriere della Sera and La Stampa; the mainly young people who regularly surf the web, and those who listen to the few independent talk radio stations like Radio 24 Ore. Then there are the much more numerous information have-nots who still take their news from TV bulletins controlled directly or indirectly by Berlusconi. This is a bizarre and alarming situation in a western European democracy, and all the more so because the have-nots are convinced they are just as well-informed as the others. They become quite indignant, even angry, if you suggest otherwise.
Before the fall of the Berlin Wall, there was a part of communist East Germany near Dresden known jokingly as the Tal der Ahnungslosen (the Valley of the Clueless). Because of some freak of topography or atmospherics, its inhabitants were unable to receive TV signals from the west and therefore had to make do with the news given to them by the regime.
No doubt they were not wholly clueless. No doubt visitors to the area told them about what they knew. No doubt, some of the young people who went to Berlin to study returned whispering tales of another and forbidden reality. But the essence of the world view held by these unfortunates was nevertheless formed by their leaders.
We are accustomed to thinking of Italy as a long, thin country with a mountainous spine. But for as long as Silvio Berlusconi remains in office we would do better to imagine it as having a deep, broad cleft running down the middle – a new Valley of the Clueless.
John Hooper
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 21 July 2009 18.00 BST
Arguably the most striking thing about the Berlusconi tapes is that most Italians know, if at all, only vaguely of their existence.
The fact that the news magazine L'Espresso had posted to its website recordings claimed to have been made by a woman who says she went to bed with him last November in the hope of securing money or influence was just not mentioned on most of last night's TV news bulletins. As far as I can make out, the story was ignored not only by Silvio Berlusconi's own Mediaset channels, but also by the first and second channels of the public broadcasting network, RAI, and by La7, which is owned by Telecom Italia. Together, they account for about two thirds of the audience at that time of night.
It might be objected that, since the recordings and transcripts have been made available on the internet, and since they were reported in the press, it doesn't really matter that TV paid no attention to them. But that ignores two crucial points.
The first is that Italy is among the countries most indifferent to the internet. According to a report in the Guardian last year less than a third of the population had access to the web, and those Italians who were linked up used the internet relatively little. The average for the population as a whole was just two hours a week. This could explain why even Mediaset was happy today to post a story about the tapes to its website (though naturally leading on the claim by Berlusconi's lawyer that they were faked). The second important point is that, even before the arrival of free news on the internet, only about one Italian in every 10 bought a daily paper.
Word of mouth will undoubtedly spread knowledge of the tapes, in the same way that it has spread a generalised realisation that there is a scandal involving the prime minister and women. But rumour and gossip are unlikely to alter the fact that the details of this whole affair, together with its public interest ramifications, remain largely unknown to most people in Italy. That is an important reason why Berlusconi has been able to shrug off calls for his resignation.
The original controversy concerned the accusation levelled by Silvio Berlusconi's wife that he was "consorting with minors", just as it emerged that he had attended the 18th birthday party of an aspiring actress and model, Naomi Letizia. The other day I found myself (not exactly for the first time) having an argument with a Rome taxi driver. It gradually emerged that we were starting from two entirely different standpoints. He had heard Berlusconi's explanation (that the girl was the daughter of an old friend), because it was carried on TV news, and had given the prime minister the benefit of the doubt. But he was quite unaware that Berlusconi's explanation had not stood up to subsequent scrutiny, because that little detail only appeared in some of the newspapers.
What we are seeing in Italy is the emergence of an information culture typical of authoritarian regimes. There are the information haves: they include those who read papers like La Repubblica, Corriere della Sera and La Stampa; the mainly young people who regularly surf the web, and those who listen to the few independent talk radio stations like Radio 24 Ore. Then there are the much more numerous information have-nots who still take their news from TV bulletins controlled directly or indirectly by Berlusconi. This is a bizarre and alarming situation in a western European democracy, and all the more so because the have-nots are convinced they are just as well-informed as the others. They become quite indignant, even angry, if you suggest otherwise.
Before the fall of the Berlin Wall, there was a part of communist East Germany near Dresden known jokingly as the Tal der Ahnungslosen (the Valley of the Clueless). Because of some freak of topography or atmospherics, its inhabitants were unable to receive TV signals from the west and therefore had to make do with the news given to them by the regime.
No doubt they were not wholly clueless. No doubt visitors to the area told them about what they knew. No doubt, some of the young people who went to Berlin to study returned whispering tales of another and forbidden reality. But the essence of the world view held by these unfortunates was nevertheless formed by their leaders.
We are accustomed to thinking of Italy as a long, thin country with a mountainous spine. But for as long as Silvio Berlusconi remains in office we would do better to imagine it as having a deep, broad cleft running down the middle – a new Valley of the Clueless.
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