Canale 5

Mondo Times editors    Boulder Colorado USA

Posted at 12:27pm on Tuesday, June 9th, 2009

A media mogul smackdown is in progress in Italy. Silvio Berlusconi lashed out at Rupert Murdoch on June 4, 2009, the Financial Times reported:

"Silvio Berlusconi, Italian prime minister and billionaire media mogul, lashed out on Thursday at Rupert Murdoch, accusing his business rival of using The Times of London to launch a series of personal attacks.

In an interview on Canale 5, one of the Mediaset channels he owns, the Italian prime minister was clearly stung by an editorial and articles in the Times on his relationship with an 18-year-old would-be model.

Mr Berlusconi’s government is fighting back against a flood of disparaging articles published in several major European publications which it sees as seriously damaging to Italy ahead of the G8 summit of major industrialised nations it will host next month.

The 72-year-old prime minister put a commercial spin on the saga, claiming that Mr Murdoch’s News Corp was responding to his government’s decision last December to double the amount of VAT paid by the group’s Sky Italia network.

”I don’t mean to be nasty but unfortunately with the episode on VAT for Sky there was a breakdown in relations with the Sky group and with Murdoch’s group, which has published a series of very critical articles attacking me,” Mr Berlusconi said."

The full story:
www.ft.com/cms/s/0/076c4b84-50f5-11de-8922-00144feabdc0.html