Massimo Ragnedda: Censorship and media ownership in Italy in the Era of Berlusconi
GMJ: Mediterranean Edition 9(1) Spring 2014, pp. 13 – 26
What we can learn about media ownership and political discourse in general through the lens of the Italian media system? The article looks at the rise of Berlusconi’s media empire and its impact on the country’s people, ethics and customs. The new deal inaugurated in Italy since 1994 when Berlusconi won his first political election, is well known as “Berlusconismo”. This new system is a sort of political, cultural and economic regime in Italy, wedding a populist and neoliberal regime. The aim is to see how it is possible to combine censorship and democracy using as example Berlusconi’s contemporary regime. The article proposes a classification of seven different types of censorship observed during Berlusconi’s governments. Some of these forms are directly linked to the totalitarian censorship, while
others are emerging in a new form in a democratic system. This mix of old and new forms of censorship are typical of ‘Berlusconismo’.
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Massimo Ragnedda 