The great merit of democracy is that it is the people who decide, democratic politicians will tell us. What they omit to tell us is that they have learned how to manipulate public opinion. The Blair government in Britain has taken US-invented spin doctoring and taken it to extremes. Their spin doctors have produced news management that surrounds voters in a warm, comforting but very often inaccurate mist of information. It was the Nazi propaganda leader Josef Goebbels who used to say that the bigger the lie and the more often it was repeated, the more likely it was to be believed. Goebbels was an early master of spin.
Spin is coming also to the French governing classes. Their certainty that they alone know what is good for the rest of the population is undiminished. However, they realize that the medicine they prescribe for voters needs the sugar pill of spin and news management. The French citizenry has historically proven dangerous. Change has come about from the streets, through violent revolution — five of them so far.
The greatest political cynicism, however, seems to exist in Italy, where media magnate Silvio Berlusconi is also his country’s premier. Even in Britain and France, for a country’s leader to be in control of its media as well would be unacceptable. Yet, Berlusconi has just used his political power to appoint one of his own people to run state broadcaster RAI. This man’s only qualification for the job is his unquestioned loyalty to Berlusconi. He is reportedly a complete stranger to the TV business. With this move, Berlusconi now effectively controls more than 90 percent of all Italian broadcast and print media.
Yet, almost at the same moment that RAI received its new chief, the Italian legislature was passing a law dealing with conflicts of interest between politics and business. It was a legislation that has everything to do with Berlusconi’s media dominance and it was something that he promised voters would be enacted within 100 days of their electing him. In the event, it took a great deal longer. Along the way, this legislation has been so amended and watered down that many commentators believe that it is useless. A single example would suffice.
A key provision is that an independent commission will monitor broadcast and press behavior for any political bias. If it spots a breach of the rules, it will report the incident to Parliament for investigation. On the face of it, this is fair enough and would seem to limit the media reach of Berlusconi. In reality, however, Berlusconi’s supporters so dominate both houses of the Italian Parliament that it is unthinkable that any critical report from the commission would be acted upon.
The legislation is, therefore, a deeply cynical act which is already upsetting Italy’s partners in the rest of the European community. Astonishingly however, ordinary Italians seem to be taking the development with great calm. This seems to have a lot to do with the fact that they expect so little from their political leaders in terms of political probity. Nevertheless, if this is true, their resignation is highly dangerous. The last person to acquire complete control of the Italian press and broadcasting was another media professional, Benito Mussolini, and he led his country to war and disaster.
