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The theoretical position on media concentration is widely held. It's backed up by historical experience, the regulatory documents that governments produce, and so on. And the key ideas that democracy requires diversity and pluralism with the media reporting and providing platform for different politicians and interest groups to present their views, is central to it. But in practice, many examples of media concentration which have a damaging and distorting effect on the democratic process have occurred and do occur, and so I want to move on now to look at examples which are from the contemporary experience.
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Silvio Berlusconi acquired his media empire in the 1980s and early 1990s when the Italian political system was extremely corrupt. And, indeed, it was the collapse of that political system which gave Silvio Berlusconi the chance to seize political power. He was Italy's richest man, owner of real estate, publishing, financial interests, the media empire, and he announced on January 26, 1994 on his three private television networks, which he owned that he was going to found a new political party, Forza Italia, and run for prime minister. So essentially in the vacuum that was created by the collapse of the old political parties and the corruption, he was able to intervene decisively because he won the election three months later and, indeed, he was prime minister again in 2001, and he was reelected in 2008. So in this post he has effective control of 90% of all Italian television through his own company Mediaset and through his power to appoint his own supporters to the public service broadcaster RAI. And as one commentator pointed out, "Half the journalists in Italy work for him, and the other half know they might one day." And as a result we see the phenomenon of self-censorship but journalists will be reluctant to criticize such a powerful figure when it might damage their career or their ability to work as a journalist in other news organizations.

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Silvio Berlusconi: the businessman who became prime minister

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