A Premier With a Hand in TV News Sues His Journalist Critics

Italy's Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi governs with a solid majority, oversees RAI, the state broadcaster, and owns the country's leading private television networks. So why, with all those means at his disposal, does the prime minister continue to respond to his journalist critics not on television or in the press but instead with lawsuits? In recent years, Mr. Berlusconi has sued the magazine The Economist for writing that he was not "fit to run Italy" and the British journalist David Lane for his 2004 book, "Berlusconi's Shadow," which explored the origins of his fortune and noted that some of his associates had been investigated for Mafia ties. Mr. Berlusconi lost those cases in lower court and either has appealed them or still has the possibility of doing so. Now, he has set his sights on Alexander Stille, America's best-known Italianist and one of the prime minister's most vocal Anglophone critics. A lower court in Milan is expected to rule on Tuesday in a defamation case filed against Mr. Stille by a close associate of Mr. Berlusconi. Berlusconi is not alone in suing reporters. In Italy — where journalists often play fast and loose with the facts and the legal system is devised to protect personal honor — politicians, magistrates and public figures sue journalists so often that the Italian National Press Federation has a "solidarity fund" to help with legal fees and damages.