Photograph: Marcello Paternostro/AFP/Getty Images courtesy of The Guardian
"All of that points to a third factor at work since last May – the growth in Berlusconi's popularity. "I'm at 75.1%", he declared yesterday. "The polls I know about say Obama is at 59%. So mine is an outright record." The survey he cited was conveniently unpublished. But even the most recent published poll, prepared for the centre-left newspaper La Repubblica, gave him an approval rating of 56%. Some of the billionaire TV proprietor's critics see it is the unavoidable consequence of his power to influence what Italians think. "Berlusconi's television channels have moved not just votes, but the entire nation," the film director Nanni Moretti argued recently. "The majority of people, and not just those on the right, now consider it normal that one man should have a monopoly of TV, be a politician and even head of the government. That is his triumph."" (John Hooper, The Guardian)
Recent Comments