ROME: Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi governs with a solid majority, oversees RAI, the state broadcaster, and owns the country's leading private television networks. So why, with all those means at his disposal, does the prime minister continue to respond to his journalist critics not on television or in the press but instead with lawsuits? In recent years, Berlusconi has sued the magazine The Economist for writing that he was not "fit to run Italy" and the British journalist David Lane for his 2004 book, "Berlusconi's Shadow," which explored the origins of his fortune and noted that some of his associates had been investigated for Mafia ties. Berlusconi lost those cases in lower court and has either appealed them or still has the possibility of doing so. Now, he has set his sights on Alexander Stille, America's best-known Italianist and one of the prime minister's most vocal Anglophone critics. A lower court in Milan is expected to rule on Tuesday in a defamation case filed against Stille by a close associate of Berlusconi.
ROME: Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi governs with a solid majority, oversees RAI, the state broadcaster, and owns the country's leading private television networks.
So why, with all those means at his disposal, does the prime minister continue to respond to his journalist critics not on television or in the press but instead with lawsuits?
In recent years, Berlusconi has sued the magazine The Economist for writing that he was not "fit to run Italy" and the British journalist David Lane for his 2004 book, "Berlusconi's Shadow," which explored the origins of his fortune and noted that some of his associates had been investigated for Mafia ties. Berlusconi lost those cases in lower court and has either appealed them or still has the possibility of doing so.
Now, he has set his sights on Alexander Stille, America's best-known Italianist and one of the prime minister's most vocal Anglophone critics. A lower court in Milan is expected to rule on Tuesday in a defamation case filed against Stille by a close associate of Berlusconi.
sky sat-tv has an ad up in italy asking for customers to protest silvio and tremonti's decision to jack up the VAT on sky subs from 10 to 20%.
it show His Sliminess lying to the voters before the election about he wasn't going to raise taxes on 'the italian family'. (like he's gonna raise them on his Confindustria buddies)
and certainly his ownership of Mediaset wouldn't be a conflict of interest, noooo way!
the EU made me do it! funny he wasn't listening to the EU's other ruling about channel 4.
berlu and murdoch, mano a mano over my eyeballs. my bet's on rupe... heh, battle of the titans- ~"When an inner situation is not made conscious, it appears outside as fate." Karl Jung~
