Crossed digits

I've spent too much time today trying to get our television in the kitchen to work. Or, to be more precise, trying to get our NEW television in the kitchen to work. Everything was fine until a few months ago. We'd sit and eat our lunch while cooks showed us how to tart up ten euros-worth of groceries, then watch the 1.30 news with a mixture of anguish, irritation and incredulous hilarity, turning it off when the sports news started. A few hours later, we'd turn it on again, while cooking, and sometimes eating, dinner, to see if the official stories had changed. Italian TV journalism, for someone used to the way things are done in the UK - one human interest story, ideally involving children, a rapid skimming of the day in politics with a couple of sound bites and a brief nod at the rest of the world (the States or a really big disaster in one of those places that otherwise don't exist), all of it dosed with knowing irony and pseudo-detachment, except for the bits with children, which would make a Hallmark rhymester cringe -, compared to all this, I repeat, Italian TV journalism is, well, too much information.

The BBC, in its wisdom, does the sifting first, to remove their notion of what constitutes the chaff from their notion of what constitutes the wheat. The RAI, in its sublime contempt, removes all the wheat it can find, lets the chaff ferment and thrive until it has a life of its own, then shovels it through the screen and into the homes of the telespectators, as they're still, touchingly, known, less to make things grow than to suffocate them at the moment of conception. What makes the two main news programmes, TG1 and TG2, interesting, though, despite all their directors' efforts, is that news of a sort gets through. Because something is always more than nothing, even the most self-serving and obscurantist something. Umberto Eco once pointed out that conspiracy theorists should read the financial news with more attention because all they need to know is there, and the same might be said of Italian TV journalism. Reading between, above, below and despite the lines, there's little that isn't, in some way, said.

So, everything was fine until a month or so ago, when the process of moving from analogue to digital TV began in Lazio, where I live. The first step involved the shift of two channels - one state, one owned by Berlusconi - to digital, immediately depriving us of TG2, the news programme that, unofficially, 'belonged' to the Northern League. Pazienza, we thought. We can live without Bossi and his green-shirted cronies crusading against minarets and kebab joints. We might not even need a television in the kitchen. We'll wait until the whole shebang goes digital. Which it did, a couple of weeks ago. We stared at the fizzing lines for a while before giving in and deciding that what we really needed wasn't just a decoder, a trifling expense I deeply resented, but a brand-new telly, a much larger expense that, for some reason, I resented far less.

Off we went to our local electrical goods emporium (TRONY - NON CI SONO PARAGONI!) to buy one. Flat screen, the thickness of a Dan Brown, 26 inches. These days TVs programme themselves. All you have to do is sit and watch. Except that it couldn't find the channels, or not very well, and even the ones it did find looked small and sounded tinny. We weren't happy. We needed something bigger, and better. We packed it back in its box and went to exchange it. For something bigger, and better. Trony is the only retail outlet in Fondi that looks as though it might belong somewhere else, in a country where retail rules. The prices are reasonable, the choice wide, the credit facilities all too readily available. Even the people who work there are courteous and informed (I mean this). But even Trony was a little stressed out as the entire populace of Fondi (or its grandmother) queued, decoder in hand, to get their mojos home and working. Romero would have loved it.

We now have a 32 inch Samsung, a thing of great elegance and beauty. We've had it since Saturday. Unfortunately, despite being auto-programmed half a dozen times a day, and sworn at, and coaxed, its gleaming black screen remains unsullied by images of any kind. There was a brief, exhilarating parenthesis when a local channel transmitting highlights from this summer's international folk dancing festival broke through the darkness to reveal some meaty grass-skirted Polynesians air-rowing their way across a creaking stage. Apart from that, nada. So this morning we called the aerial man. And, as is usual when confronted by an expert, I learnt all kinds of thing I hadn't known. I learnt, for example, that my aerial was laughable out of date. I learnt that aerials necessarily have an alimentatore (don't ask) and that I didn't have the faintest idea where ours was, although it's most probably behind a large kitchen dresser filled with glasses. This will have to be moved. I learnt that, even with Sky, the RAI and many commercial channels will be unavailable. I learnt that if I wanted to continue watching cooks vie with each other over pasta-making machines and Daniele Capezzone, currently the vilest of all Berlusconi's mouthpieces, strut his mendacious self-serving stuff (and I do, despite myself, want this), I would have to spend something like 200 euros, on top of the cost of the new TV. I learnt that I could extend my Sky contract to a second TV for a modest monthly sum and a less modest sum up front. I learnt that whatever I decided I wanted I would have to wait some days before I got it. Learning isn't painless.

I'll keep you informed.

PS I've just noticed that I've used the word self-serving to talk about Italian institutions twice. I wonder why.

Button up

The France Soir correspondent in Rome, Ariel Dumont, has just been sacked for being anti-Berlusconian. This isn't what the paper says, of course. The editor talks about the need to rationalise its overseas representation for reasons of budget and denies any pressure from the newspaper's owner. France Soir is controlled by 23-year-old Alexander Pugachev, the son of the Russian oligarch Sergei Pugachev, the 605th richest man in the world, ex-Chekhist and close friend of Putin. Berlusconi, by sheer coincidence, is also a close friend of Putin, in what passes for friendship among people of this sort.

By further coincidence, the newspaper has also sacked Natalie Ouvaroff, its Moscow correspondent, who has been less than gentle recently with the feisty bare-chested salmon wrestler from St. Petersburg, the man whose reputation may not be besmirched, or else. The dinky badge to the right, by the way, belongs to the KGB ans may once have adorned young Vlad's lapel, or wherever they used to wear these things.

Still, things could be worse. Getting the sack isn't much fun, but it's better than being shot in the head.

All the news that's fit to print

The blonde in the green tee-shirt is Noemi Letizia. She's the eighteen-year-old who calls Silvio Berlusconi Papi and can't decide whether to cavort on a table in her underwear or represent Italy at the European parliament (and, let's face it girls, could you?). The man standing next to her, one hand adoringly encircling her neck, is her boyfriend. His name is Domenico Cozzolino. The older couple behind them, lips pressed together as the pressure within Vesuvius slowly builds to their rear, are the happily-married parents of Noemi, Signor and Signora Letizia, enjoying a moment's intimacy. The photograph comes from a popular Italian magazine called Chi (Who).

In the preceding paragraph the first and last sentences are true. The rest of it is nonsense. Domenico Cozzolino is not, and never was, Noemi's boyfriend. He's pimped himself on afternoon TV and is now a PR. He was asked by Noemi, who'd apparently been prompted by someone else, to pretend to be having an affair with her, indeed, to be engaged to be married. Naturally, no PR worth his salt would turn down the chance to be photographed with a household name for a mass circulation magazine, even if it does mean lying through his teeth. And talking of lying, the couple of canoodlers in the background may be Noemi's parents, but they aren't usually this affectionate with each other. They're separated and have been for some time. The photograph, like the article accompanying it, is a complete fabrication. It's a lie designed to legitimate the Letizia family and their squalid dealings with the Italian prime minister. Who also happens to be the owner of Mondadori. Which happens to publish Chi.

I don't know why I bother.

Boys will be boys

If you look in an English-Italian dictionary for a translation of the word ragazzo, you'll find 'boy', followed by 'boyfriend', 'young man'. Italians of all ages frequently use the word to address a group of friends, the irony more evident as the age of the group increases. But it's a good word on the whole, a word that expresses affection and solidarity, particularly when it's addressed to people who fall outside its strict chronological range. So it's been interesting in the past few days to see how the media use the word. 

Italy's seeing a lot of street violence at the moment, or, at least, the media are paying a lot of attention to it. All news is mediated and it would be naive to pretend otherwise, but there's an interesting distinction that needs to be made between two kinds of mediation, particularly with television reporting. The first is the air of general obedience to whoever holds political sway within the country or, more importantly, to the editor in control of the specific news programme for which the journalist works; invariably a political, or party, nomination. Bruno Vespa, a TV journalist who's tough with the weak and supine with the powerful, once referred to the Christian Democrats as his editorial point of reference, although he's certainly revised that view with each election and is now lapping with his usual zeal from the bowl provided by Silvio Berlusconi. This doesn't only happen in Italy, of course, and not all journalists can be tarred with the same brush, but independent monitoring organisations confirm the sense that the news in Italy has, let's say, a marked tendency to bend with the prevailing wind.

The other kind of mediation is linguistic. Among the stories that have been used to distract attention from the economic crisis and the bare-faced indifference of the government to issues not directly linked with Berlusconi's vendetta against the judiciary system are a series of rapes and an act of violence against a homeless person. Most of these rapes have been committed, as far as we know, by Romanians, usually young men, usually in groups. The act of violence, during which a homeless 35-year-old Indian, trying to sleep on a bench in Nettuno station, was first insulted, then beaten up, then covered with petrol and set alight, was also committed by a group of three men, ranging in age from 16 to 29, but these happened to be Italian. The Romanians are, without exception, referred to as Romanians. The Italians, who may be facing a charge of murder if the man dies, which seems likely, are defined as ragazzi. 

Leaving Navtej Singh Sidho, recently made unemployed and evicted from his lodgings, with third degree burns over much of his body, the 29-year-old ragazzo sent a celebratory text to friends in Roman dialect: "Gli amo fatto la festa". (In standard Italian, this would be "Gli abbiamo fatto la festa"). Fare la festa is an expression that translates as 'Give somebody a warm welcome'. The irony in Italian is bad enough; in English it becomes almost unbearable.

Evidence

A couple of nights ago, while reporting in its usual brown-nosing way on Ratzinger’s visit to France, Italy’s TG2, the state-run evening news programme, talked about the 'appearance' of the Madonna at Lourdes. Except that, the way it was said, there weren't any inverted commas around appearance. And I didn’t hear any of those qualifying words like ‘claimed’, or ‘presumed’ or, well, ‘possibly never happened’. Apparently, for Italian state television, she really did appear. The physical presence of a woman who’s been dead for damn near two thousand years in a small French town one and a half centuries ago is a fact. Like Russia invading Georgia, or Berlusconi representing Italy at G8. (Hmm.)   

This was followed by an account of a recent 'miracle'. There was an interview with the head of some preposterous religious organization set up to ensure the validity of religious miracles who said that, yes, this was a miracle. Apparently we’re supposed to believe the man because many so-called religious miracles are shown to be false, which makes this one true. Next thing, we’ll be asking Russell Davies if being on the cusp really makes a difference to the way we relate to Sagittarians. Publish Post

Postscript to postscript

Sorry about this - and believe me, I really am trying to move on - but I was so appalled by this example of partisan journalism, in a country that knows little else, that I felt I had to share it. For those among you who don't speak Italian, the irate young man in a suit at the beginning of the piece isn't one of the spotty fascists (from Casa Pound, god help us) who tried to disrupt the march last Saturday, but a frustrated groom. He was supposed to be getting married in Via dei Fori Imperiali, but couldn't get the car to the church. Authorisation had been granted months before, he said. Sound familiar? Right! If the council had respected the authorisation it gave to Gay Pride months before, he wouldn't have found his wedding delayed. Odd that no one in the studio thought of pointing this out.

The skinny bint playing nervously with her pen in the rest of the piece is Carfagna. You may not have recognised her with her clothes on. She's talking about sobriety and stuff like that, but I won't bother you any more with her silliness. We've all heard enough from Carfagna for one government.

Mud

One of the saddest aspects of the way Silvio Berlusconi has skewed political and civil life in Italy is the arsenal he's chosen to vilify and discredit his adversaries. As long as these are politicians it’s part and parcel – unfortunately – of the way debate is conducted here, in no small measure thanks to Berlusconi himself – surely the only national leader in the west who would claim that communists not only eat babies, but boil them first – and to the gaggle of publicists and lawyers he’s surrounded by, mud-slingers all. But his vulgar ad hominem attacks have also been directed at two men, both journalists, both now dead, whose professional behaviour was never less than impeccable and whose political positions were far closer to any normal idea of what a respectable centre (-right) might be than is Berlusconi’s own: Indro Montanelli and Enzo Biagi. By attacking these men, Berlusconi has shown his contempt for the principle of a free press.

Montanelli died in 2001. Fiercely anti-communist, critical of the Christian Democratic hegemony, the target of a knee-capping attack by the Red Brigades, Montanelli had worked for Corriere della Sera until it veered left, after which he edited Il Giornale. Heavily indebted, the paper was bought by Berlusconi in 1977. In 1993, when Forza Italia was founded, Berlusconi apparently turned up at the editorial offices and informed the staff that the paper would support his every political move. Montanelli resigned, accusing Berlusconi of being anti-democratic. Berlsuconi’s campaign of vilification began, and continued until the journalist’s death.

Enzo Biagi died yesterday, after a 60-year career as a journalist in print and, subsequently, television. Berlusconi was gunning for the man long before he officially entered politics, after Biagi questioned his financial links with Bettino Craxi, the then-head of the Socialist Party, so it wasn’t surprising that he should have included Biagi’s name in his famous Bulgarian edict against those who made a ‘criminal’ use of the television. A feature of totalitarianism – and advertising – is that things rarely do what it says on the tin. Indeed, as Orwell taught us, they tend to do the opposite. So it’s wryly amusing – the kind of humour Biagi most appreciated – that Berlusconi should regard Biagi as criminal. What is less amusing is that the journalist was profoundly hurt by the supine way in which Italian state television simply turned its back on him, and kept it turned. By the time Berlusconi was once more in opposition, Biagi was too ill to do more than make a token come-back to TV.

It isn’t just mud on Berlusconi’s hands.

Facebook journalism

It's chastening to discover that Isabelle Dinoire, the French woman who received the first face transplant, wouldn't have known that the donor had committed suicide if it hadn't been for the gallant investigative efforts of British tabloids. There's an article about her autobiography here.