{"id":190988,"date":"2009-10-08T19:50:00","date_gmt":"2009-10-09T00:50:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2009\/10\/08\/and-people-pile-on-berlusconi\/"},"modified":"2009-10-08T19:50:00","modified_gmt":"2009-10-09T00:50:00","slug":"and-people-pile-on-berlusconi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2009\/10\/08\/and-people-pile-on-berlusconi\/","title":{"rendered":"And People Pile on Berlusconi"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>With <a href=\"http:\/\/euobserver.com\/9\/28796\">Members of the European Parliament calling for sanctions against Italy<\/a> over media consolidation in Italy:<\/p>\n<blockquote style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 153);\"><p>Mr Berlusconi owns three commercial broadcasters, has indirect control over three public channels and owns a series of magazines, newspapers and radio stations as well as the country&#8217;s largest publishing house. His advertising firm controls much of the advertising sales in Italy, allowing his reach to extend to media beyond his direct control.<\/p>\n<p>The MEPs say this has created a climate of media intimidation where journalists are fired for stepping out of line while others self-censor to hold onto their jobs. Key posts in the media are based on an individual being sufficiently deferential to the current administration, critics allege.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>It would be nice if some action comes from this.<\/p>\n<p>As bad as the MSM is in the United States, the idea of a political candidate controlling all the TV and cable outlets in a country is a scary thing.<\/p>\n<p>The vote, which passed 268 &#8211; 284, is merely to start an inquiry, but it&#8217;s a good thing.<\/p>\n<p>I think that what is going on with Berlusconi here is very similar to what was done with Pablo Escobar:  You peel away at layers of protection, and eventually, pretty much all at once, the house of cards collapses, and you take the crook down.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>With Members of the European Parliament calling for sanctions against Italy over media consolidation in Italy: Mr Berlusconi owns three commercial broadcasters, has indirect control over three public channels and owns a series of magazines, newspapers and radio stations as well as the country&#8217;s largest publishing house. His advertising firm controls much of the advertising &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[984,1009,1129,1020,1064],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-190988","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-europe","category-government","category-journalism","category-legislation","category-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190988"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=190988"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190988\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=190988"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=190988"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=190988"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}