I haven't followed this case closely enough to make a call, but the fact that she tried to implicate an innocent man (perhaps to take advantage of prejudices, he is Congolese) among the lies, do not inspire a sense of sympathy in my eyes. Scared or not, if she was sincere she would have given her full support to the police investigation. What was her fear if she was innocent? A person willing to travel abroad, live for months in a foreign land, doing drugs illegal in that land doesn't sound like someone that scares easily. These rich little snots, liberal or not, think they can go anywhere, do whatever they want, and mommy and daddy will just write a check and make it all better. Guilty or innocent, she went abroad and behaved poorly, in a manner that embarrasses me as an American. I don't buy the "she's young" defense. If that was the case she should have stayed home. The jury deliberated for 13 hours, so it must have been a hard case. I have to trust the jury made the right choice. I just hope more "students" go an learn something, instead of showing the world what @sses they can be.

I don't really know how much you know about the reputation of the italian justice department - from what I heard the investigation was beyond sloppy. And if you can not prove a person is guilty byeond any doubt that person is regarded as innocent - in dubio pro reo.

Italy is a weird country anyway, today more than 350 000 ppl demonstrated in Rome against Berlusconi. He is said to have connections to the mafia and controls the media because the major italian media concern is his. Italian supreme court has ruled that the he has no immunity, but despite strong allegations that he is corrupt, Berlusconi said that he sees no reason to step  down from his position, even if he were convicted. The whole government is rife with nepotism and corruption on every level - it really isn't a surprise that the murder investigation was done with such low standards.

Even if my comment might suggest otherwise, I like Italy but one has to watch oneself while there.

One would then have to believe the jury has an agenda. If the murdered victim were Italian, I could see a potential to favor the prosecution. Whether or not corruption exists (having been to Italy many times, and living in Sicily for a short time, I would say yes) as far as I can see there is nothing to be gained from a conviction. Corruption needs an incentive. If the investigation was sloppy (and I've heard this as well) either the jury didn't think so or the defense was incompetent.

Funny, in your statement change Italy/Italian to US, Rome to Washington, Berlusconi to Obama, and Mafia to Chicago crime bosses and this is something you could easily hear about in America. Maybe Italy really isn't that much different from the rest of the world.

It really isn't. But it has that reputation because Italians are more open about it and non-Italians are more willing to accept that Italy is corrupt than that their own countries are not perfect.

 

A good argument against a death penalty, that case.

It really isn't. It just has a bad reputation because it's in everybody else's interest that _Italy_ is the corrupt country, not the US or Germany.

 

The thing about Berlusconi is that he controls the media in Italy because the main tv broadcaster and newspapers belong to him. In effect, there is no free press because the writers won't be critical and piss off their boss - or if they do, they get fired. Freedom of the press is protected as a constitutional right and one mark of a free democratic nation. And even if everything you alleged about Obama were true, he does not own and control the major media outlets in the US. The US media hs its own problems, but journalists can be critical without fearing to lose their jobs or any other repercussions.

As you have a two party system that roughly alternates between opposition and administration, you will always have people protesting and making allegations of corruption (might I discreetly point to GW Bush's connection to the oil industry? I am sure I could find lots of conspiracy theories just about that even if I just searched for 5 minutes, or people demonstrating against the Bush administration.. what you said was also mostly true for Bush).

 

That doesn't mean that he "controls the media". If hundreds of thousands of people demonstrate against him I think it is safe to say that people are not listening to his media.

 

What about the non-Berlusconi press and how is that different from the liberal media system in the US?

 

But you misunderstand what "freedom of the press" means. Berlusconi's media empire is a symptom of that freedom, not an obstacle to it.

 

It is.

 

While Obama himself does not own the media, people sympathetic to him do. That makes it more, not less, difficult to be critical of him since the connection is not as honest as Berlusconi's to his media.

And I haven't heard any stories that suggest that being critical of Berlusconi is a problem for Italian journalists. In fact I have heard a lot more open criticism of Berlusconi coming from Italian journalisrts than open criticism of Obama coming from American journalists.

 

Except he really didn't have any control over the media. Just look at supposed random pictures of Bush and Obama journalists use for their articles. For George Bush they always chose the dumbest-looking picture they could find, whereas Obama is always displayed as a wise leader, usually standing in front of an American flag looking forward and slightly to the skies.

(Ironically some news outlets are now noticing that Obama still hasn't achieved anything and they now blame HIM, not themselves, for the way they portrayed him for a year. What's the German term for the media's loyalty to Obama? Vorrauseilender Gehorsam?)

 

 

I think your analysis is very good and to the point.

 

While I agree that a privately owned media empire is a symptom of free press, it becomes a little blurry if that owner is head of state at the same time. I always thought that freedom of the press was supposed to eliminate undue influence of the government and most importantly censorship and guarantee that a writer can write what he truly thinks, be it critical or not. I would contest that the media that is owned by B. is independant and free of censorship.

And Berlusconi owns the main media outlets, which does not mean he supresses the rest or that there are repercussions.. what I said was meant in reference to those that he owned. Maybe I should have phrased that better. But as his empire is the most dominant one he has the most influence on the media in Italy. In effect, even though there are many independant journalists, Berslusconi controls the media because he owns most of it.

Those people that dominate the liberal media in the US are not controlled by the government. Is is their right to support his policy  if they so chose - if their employed journalists have all the freedom of thought and press that are granted by the constitution is something else entirely. One could debate the whole question whether media empires can be independant at all - your criticism is justified in that resort - but even so, it is not the same as quasi government influence B. has.

The US government does not censor critical press nor does Obama own its own media empire.

(Berlusconi is the head of government, not the head of state.)

To eliminate undue influence, yes. But influence by the owner is not "undue". It's completely legitimate and it's not censorship if the owner of a corporation decides what the corporation should publish, just like it's not censorship when I decide not to blog on some subject.

Anyone in Italy can write what they truly think, they just cannot use Berlusconi's money to do so.

And while that mechanism was a problem in the 20th century, I think by now the Internet gives everybody a platform. I don't even have a telly. I get most of my news from blogs these days.




And when government and religion should be separate a priest could still be elected and the same problem would arise.

But it doesn't really matter whether a politician owns the media or is merely supported by them to the extreme. And I have seen no evidence that Berlusconi's media outlets lie about stories the way I have seen other media companies lie all the time.

Isn't the entire discussion about Berlusconi owning large parts of the media really a distraction from the actual argument whether or not Berlusconi's media companies are really worse than others?




I do not doubt their right to support whomever they want. And I do not doubt Berlusconi's right to own media outlets. But I do have an issue with American media agreeing with Obama and pushing his agenda pretending to be "independent", while Berlusconi is the bad guy for being honest enough to have a direct connection with the media outlets supporting him.

And that still doesn't address the issue if Berlusconi's media outlets have done anything wrong.

I am assuming they haven't. Because if they had, we would talk about what they did, and not about who owns them.




The government has no influence in Berlusconi's media outlets, Berlusconi does. While I am sure his decisions as prime minister are based on what the parliament says he must do, I am even more sure that Berlusconi doesn't care what parliament says when he makes decisions for his media corporation. So where is the government influence?




But that's completely irrelevant. Obama doesn't need to own his own media empire since the media already support him.

I seem to recall Naples the problem they have with garbage disposal (which is controlled by the mafia) last summer and the year before that. Then there was a story that the mafia sunk ships with toxic waste off the coast of Italy (don't know if that was true or not in the end), news of killed prosecutors by the mafia, of nepotism in Sicily in public offices etc etc. Maybe Italians are more open about all that (corruption), but it is also very hard to deny or conceal. And South Italy is the home of the comorra and Mafia has a lot of influence - I am not saying it is restricted to Italy, but then I wasn't writing about corruption in general.

 

good summary

http://www.tagesschau.de/ausland/korruptionitalien100.html

 

That's an article by German state television (which has an anti-Berlusconi agenda) ACCUSING Berlusconi of censorship. Its only example is the fact that Berlusconi's outlets didn't cover Berlusconi's sex scandals.

Apart from that the article refers to Berlusconi openly calling foreign journalists "left-wing scoundrels". The author of the article takes that as proof that Berlusconi is abusing his power.

In fact they seem to be criticising Berluconi mostly for the fact that he criticised THEM first.

So basically Berlusconi and media outlets opposed to him accuse each other of censorship. But where is the evidence?

 

The US has 50 States, 2 of them being outside the main land. When I'm done visiting these 50 States I'll consider taking a trip outside the US. Besides, I'm not to thrilled to visit countries where Americans are seen in a bad way regardless what we do.

But we declare war on you yankee pigs every few decades. Doesn't that do anything for you?