An Italian Court Cracks Down On Gossip For Gossip’s Sake -- You Think That Is Going To Stop The Henchman of Rumor And Scandal?

Italians, of course, have made a fine art of gossip. And to be the target of such gossip can be horrifying.

The most recent Italian personality to cry foul is Nicoletta Mantovani, the widow of Luciano Pavarotti. She had a remarkable interview on Italian television to decry various media reports that Pavarotti had left her and 4-year-old daughter Alice is poverty with massive multi-million Euro debts, that she was fighting with the tenor’s daughter from his first marriage over his will, and that their marriage was in deep trouble before he died.

So she went on RAI (state television) for an interview conducted by a long-time family friend to set the record straight. No, she said, the family had not been left in debt; no, there was no squabble over the will since Pavarotti had left her half the estate and the other half was split between his four daughters, and there was no family argument because Pavarotti had left her the couple’s New York residences.

“The press and television that is trying to incriminate that relationship is truly unseeming,” she declared.

ftm background

Unfortunately for Italy’s Richest Man And Its Former Prime Minister It Was A Slow News Day So When Oggi Magazine Ran All Those Paparazzi Pictures Of What It Calls “Berlusconi’s Harem” It Made Global Headlines, Big
Italy’s Oggi Magazine on Wednesday ran several pictures of former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi walking hand-in-hand with a couple of 20-somethings, there was a shot of a couple more, each sitting on a knee, and his left hand looks suspiciously as if it is under one girl’s sweater, and there was a red-head whom he seemed to appreciate perhaps the most. Those pictures would be political death for politicians in many countries but in Italy they could easily get him re-elected!

British And US Surveys Tell Traditional Media What They Already Knew -- Attempts To Keep Or Attract The Young Are Failing As They Migrate to The Internet In Ever Increasing Numbers
Two separate surveys on each side of the Atlantic confirm – as if it really needed confirmation – that the young are giving up their newspapers and television and spending ever increasing time on the Internet and using their mobile phones. Plus one other problem -- the older folks are getting the hang of the Internet now, and they’re also spending more time online.

And why did she go on television? “I owe it to the two people closest to me. If they insult me, it can pass with patience. I’m here and can defend myself. But Luciano can’t and Alice is a four-year-old child.”

And then just last week Italians just wanted to learn more about Italian actress Valentina Giola who claimed she had an affair with Formula 1’s new world champion, Kimi Räikkönen. She said she called it off when she learned he was married. “I was watching a race on TV when they said something about his wife, Jenni. I called everything off, I threw away his gifts. It’s over; I was heartbroken, “she panted to the Star+TV gossip magazine.

The judgment by a Rome Circuit Court last week is intended to stop gossip in its tracks unless the item is used to make a bigger point about the person mentioned. The rule applies to broadcast and print. Nobody expects the law will actually stop gossip, but it does give prosecutors a weapon if they decide that the media has overstepped the bounds of decency and privacy. A television producer told the ANSA news agency, “Everyone will abuse the gossip rules, but now those who do risk being sanctioned.”

Of course in Italy politics and gossip go hand in hand and it should not be forgotten that Italy’s richest industrialist, former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, owns the country’s largest commercial terrestrial TV networks. Berlusconi was in the news over the past few days because once again he has managed to escape prosecutors wanting to get him for tax avoidance vis-à-vis his Mediaset empire, but the courts ruled the statue of limitations for events that occurred in the year 2000 has passed. But prosecutors have not given up and are still pursuing similar tax scandals for events in which the statute of limitations has not passed. And all of this is happening as Berlusconi has dumped his Forza Italia (Go Italy) political alliance in order to try and get new elections called for next year even though the Prodi government can stay in office until 2011.

Berlusconi’s center-right coalition suffered a big defeat in the Italian Senate last week by being unable to defeat the government’s budget bill, and that caused a rift between Berlusconi and Gianfranco Fini, the leader of his biggest coalition partner. In a damning interview in Corriere della Sera, Fini blamed Berlusconi for being over-confident that the coalition would win the Senate vote.

So Berlusconi has taken his revenge by declaring Forza Italia dead and he’s supporting a new right wing party, La Destra, which is best known for one of its main backers, Daniela Santanchè , welcome on many TV talk shows both for her intelligence and good looks (Remember, this is Italy!). Berlusconi and she getting into the same political bed really has the gossips gossiping!

They have political history. Back in 2006 when Berlusconi was prime minister Santachè was a political ally in Parliament, sponsoring a measure supported by Berlusconi to add new taxes on porn. "I believe the porn tax is important not for moralistic reasons, which don't concern me, but because I think that at a time of difficult economic conditions for families it is right to tax products that aren't essential," she said at the time.

Fini says there is no way he will join with Berlusconi’s new right-wing party, so now that Fini is no longer Berlusconi’s political partner is he fair game for Berlusconi’s Mediaset TV networks, especially since he has been unkind to Berlusconi in print? There is fodder for the Mediaset gossips -- Fini’s show business girl friend is allegedly pregnant.

But before one should get too carried away by the possible shenanigans of Italian media gossip, one should remember that every culture has its own journalistic norms. For instance there is a murder mystery unraveling in Italy that is big news in the UK and the US, the death of a British student, Meredith Kercher , with one of four alleged suspects being her roommate, American Amanda Knox. The Italian press is awash with minute detail about the case, referring to Amanda Knox politely as “L’americana” or by her first name.

But switch to the UK’s tabloid market and it’s the opposite with perhaps the best example being the up-market Daily Mail tabloid and it’s “Foxy Knoxy, the girl who had to compete with her own mother for men” with a sub-head, “Her father walked out when she was only four and her mother then married a toyboy... the disturbing past of the student accused of killing her British flatmate”

So in Italy one will learn all there is to know about the police investigation, but the British press has gone to town uncovering all there is to allegedly know about Amanda and how much of that is “fact” as opposed to “gossip”? Difference in style!

As French author Octave Feuillet once described, “Gossip is the henchman of rumor and scandal.”