Feltri e Berlusconi

Recently the public opinion of our sunny land has been busy talking about the spicy sexual life of Dino Boffo, also known as the ex editor of the slightly conservative newspaper Avvenire (owned by CEI, the council of bishops located in Vatican City). There has been rumors about his homosexuality since years: as much as we know (and Boffo didn’t deny anything), he had to pay 516 euros in 2004 after he molested a girl via telephone. Reportingly, Boffo had sex with the girl’s boyfriend.

Nothing bad with it, of course; but, unfortunately, if you are one of the most important and influent spokeperson of a 2000 years old company that consider homosexuality as an unforgivable sin, you are supposed to be honest and blameless. Certainly not a queer.

Well, this story came out after Avvenire started to warmly criticise our prime minister Berlusconi’s behaviour. Not a coincidence, if we consider that il Giornale (the newspaper that kicked off the scandal) is legally owned by Berlusconi’s brother and practically controlled by Berlusconi himself.

We all know why Berlusconi began to be criticized by a relevant part of catholic public opinion: sex addiction, unclear relationships with underage girls, disrespect for his wife and immoral attitude towards women. It seems he doesn’t care about that, despite the dozens of newspapers waiting for explanations. We may say “nothing relevant”: in Italy owning a football team and a bunch of televisions is enough to be considered just “a funny guy who loves women, what’s wrong with that?”. But this is not the point.

I want to focus on one particular thing nobody seems to care about. Let’s underline what Vittorio Feltri, editor of Il Giornale, said about the whole thing. He stated: “I decided to publish that article just to increase newspapers sales”. He clearly admitted that Italian people are just a gossip-addicted herd. He shamelessly said that he uses that hot piece of news in order to make some money off italians stupidity. We have to remember that a few weeks ago we could read that Il Giornale’s journalists were proud to work for gossip-free newspaper, not interested in private or sexual life, compared to other papers such as Repubblica (that is somehow leading the worldwide campaign against Berlusconi’s sleazy sexual behavior).

What makes me quite sad is that Feltri is totally right. Italian people are predictable and controllable by mass medias owners. We are not able to understand that what we read in mainstream newspapers and what we see on TV is fake, controlled, politically influenced.  Sometimes lies, sometimes distorted reality, sometimes real facts just reported in the wrong way. There’s always a reason behind editorial choices.

A couple of months ago the editor of TG1, the main news program in public television, appeared on TV to say that he didn’t want TG1 to talk about prime minister’s private life, stating that it was not relevant and not interesting at all. He forgot to mention that hundreds of newspapers all over the world are actually quite interested in it. Is it acceptable?

No doubt the answer is “not”. But what can we do? Do we have to continue to complain pointlessly? Maybe the answer is “not” again. I think there’s a way to be free: if we just push the red botton located on our remote control. And never switch it on again. Never care about what happen on TV. Never care about reality shows. Never buy any newspaper. Never buy anything owned by Berlusconi. Never care about football, since it’s just a money making machine exploiting our primitive instinct. As well as naked girls on TV.

Since we have internet, a free and world-connected source of information, we don’t need politically controlled national media. We just need pristine toilet paper, not the one with writings on it (i mean stuff like Il Giornale).