And we put a thing! Article
Company culture and religion, published Tuesday, July 21, 2009 in Great Britain.
[The Guardian]
As demonstrated by the lack of dedicated space to intimate conversations recorded between the sheets of the house, the Italian prime minister has established a culture of information typical of authoritarian regimes.
regard to the records of Berlusconi, perhaps the most striking thing is that most of the Italians only vaguely aware of their existence, when not ignored altogether.
The fact that the magazine L'Espresso has published information on its website the records obtained from a woman who claims to have slept with him last November, hoping to make money or influence, it was reported by Most of the news last night. To my knowledge, history has been ignored not only by Silvio Berlusconi's Mediaset channels, but also the first and second public channel, RAI, and La7, owned by Telecom Italy. Together, together accounted for two thirds of the listening public in the end the evening.
It could be argued that, since the recordings and transcripts were made available on the internet and since they have been reported in the press, no matter what TV it is not concerned. But this overlooks two crucial points.
The first is that Italy is among the nations most indifferent to the internet. According to a survey by the Guardian last year, less than a third of the population had access to the web and the Italians who were connected used the internet relatively little. The average over the entire population was only two hours a week. This may explain why even today Mediaset was happy to publish a story about the recordings on his site (with the natural conclusion of the Advocate of Berlusconi that are false).
The second important point is that even before the arrival of free information on the Internet, only one in ten bought the Italian newspapers.
Word of mouth will spread the knowledge of the tapes without a doubt, in the same way it has issued a general awareness that there is a scandal involving the Prime Minister and some women. But it is unlikely that rumors and gossip will change the fact that the details of the whole thing together with its ramifications in the public interest, remain largely unknown to most people in Italy. This is an important reason why Berlusconi has been possible to ignore the demands for his resignation.
The original dispute concerned the clear accusation of the wife of Silvio Berlusconi for his "go to minors", as evidenced by its participation in the festival for the eighteenth birthday of the aspiring actress and model Letizia.
The other day I found myself (not exactly for the first time) to have a discussion with a taxi driver Roman. It was found that gradually we are starting from two diametrically opposite points of view. He had heard the explanation of Berlusconi (the girl was the daughter of an old friend) who was supported by television news, and gave the prime minister the benefit of the doubt. But he was unaware that the explanation for Mr Berlusconi had not right next to a careful examination, because this little detail appears only in some newspaper.
What we see in Italy is the emergence of a culture of information typical of authoritarian regimes. We are informed: they include those who read newspapers like La Repubblica, Corriere della Sera and La Stampa, who usually sail network (especially young), and those who listen to the few independent radio stations such as Radio 24 Hours.
So there are many more who still uninformed learn the news by the news directly or indirectly controlled by Berlusconi. This is an unusual and alarming situation in a western European democracy, and even more so because the uninformed are convinced to be well informed as others. It is indignant, is angry even, if it suggests the opposite.
Before the fall of the Berlin Wall, there was a part of communist East Germany near Dresden, known jokingly as Tal der Ahnungslosen (the Valley of Disinformation). Because of odd conditions topographic or atmospheric, its inhabitants could not receive TV signals from the west, and then had to make do with the information given to them by the regime.
No doubt they were entirely uninformed. No doubt the tourists in the area told them what they knew. No doubt, some among the youth who went to Berlin to study returned whispering tales of a different reality and prohibited. But basically the world view that these unfortunates had was still formed by their leaders.
We usually think to Italy as a nation with a long narrow mountainous spine. But until Silvio Berlusconi remains in office we had better be imagined through a vast and deep crevasse - a new Valley of Disinformation.
