On the same day two stories arrived on the Italian media, the arrest of four carabinieri for having blackmailed the PD president of Lazio Piero Marrazzo, for a video in his bedroom, and the revelations of mafia informant Gaspare Spatuzza on the alleged alliance between the bosses Graviano and Silvio Berlusconi and Marcello Dell’Utri.

While the video of the blackmailers does not involve a formal crime for the president of Lazio, who is instead the protagonist of a history of a “different”

kind of sex, the revelations of Gaspare Spatuzza, who committed murders and slaughters, accuse the Prime Minister of having had relations with the mafia, that, if confirmed, would send Silvio Berlusconi under trial.

 

In any other country of the world, the revelations of a Mafia informant would have been taken more seriously compared to the alleged “transsexual” habits of Marrazzo.

The Italian media instead pointed to the sex and the Marrazzo case, and conceded a small amount of time on the investigations of the 1992 slaughters and the relationship between the mafia and politics. National news editions did not even mention the fact. Some think that the accusations against Berlusconi are no longer news because they arrive every day. Maybe it is the truth. But it is undeniable that information should include everything. Talking about a fact does not mean to crucify someone, because a story can be told in many different ways. If the media represent the choices of Italians on the cases Marrazzo and Berlusconi-Dell’Utri, we should deduct that in Italy sex stories count more than blood, violence and the Mafia. But we do not think that the media always represents what people really want to hear.

 

Translated by Chiara Nunnari from John Milton Institute