Recent blogs have mostly reflected more reserved and restricted countries and regions throughout the world when it comes to media usage and its relationship to politics; however, this week we are going to take a shift and look at the relationship that Italy has between media and politics. Italy has an interesting relationship between the two as, "Italian press is highly regionalized, reflecting Italy's strongly regional history and character" (BBC). Italy has a rich past of the majority of newspapers and news channels being privately-owned, which often creates an uneven and unfair partnership between the two as news is supposed to be there to hold the government and politicians accountable and to spread factual information; however, when privately owned they are for the majority, "linked to a political party or run by a large media group," that compromises the authenticity of news by sharing biases and targeted articles in favor of one party over another (BBC).
While Italy's media certainly covers all sides of the story and provides helpful information to its citizens, "Italy's heady blend of politics and media has sometimes led to concerns about the concentration of media ownership in the hands of former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi," (BBC). This is very interesting as often times, a former Prime Minister or any politician privately owning news outlets is not the most promising for an open and democratic relationship between media and politics. When someone in power also owns media outlets, they often have a say and can dictate what is produced and shared with the public, and more times than not they will make sure it favors themselves to make them look good. Berlusconi's company, Mediaset, "owns Italy's top private TV stations, and the public broadcaster, Rai," which have typically been, "subject to political influence," (BBC). By Berlusconi having ownership of such media outlets, " he was able to exert tight control over both public and private broadcasting," which drastically counteracts the purpose of media to inform the public in a nonbiased, factual manner.
Within Italy, just a few companies have a vast dominance over the TV market which has the ability to be used as a, "powerful political tool," as approximately, "80% of the population is said to rely on the TV for daily news (BBC). This large percentage of people who gain their knowledge from the TV coupled with the monopolized mass media broadcasting throughout the state creates an interesting dynamic that walks an extremely fine line between the media being able to provide to the citizens what it is truly supposed to deliver on. People will have to stay vigilant to these statistics as they consume a lot of the news in Italy in order fact check and make sure that the coverage they are receiving is honest and not in favor of the person or group that owns that certain news outlet. This is certainly a very interesting find as it has the ability to turn into a state that spreads false information without the ability to be fact checked or balanced out as the majority of media and news outlets are privately owned.
BBC. (2023, July 3). Italy Media Guide. BBC News. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-17433146#:~:text=The%20Italian%20press%20is%20highly%20regionalised%2C%20reflecting%20Italy%27s,figures%20are%20low%20compared%20to%20other%20European%20countries.
This is a very interesting deep dive into Italy's media. I has no idea that they relied on TV that much for their news. That is very interesting because here in the U.S. we don't tend to tune into the TV media unless it is an emergency or something big is happening. That also doesn't give the other areas any chance to grow and it gives the TV market the majority of the trust. If Italy was spreading false information through the TV news it could barely be combatted, just because there is not a lot of outsourcing. The U.S. has moved on from TV as it has continuously dropped in viewership.
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