ROME—Silvio Berlusconi denied on Thursday that he had manipulated Italian television when he was prime minister and said he was victim of a smear campaign.
The issue of whether Berlusconi, owner of the biggest private broadcaster Mediaset, controlled TV in his five years in office has resurfaced with a press report that Mediaset and state-owned RAI colluded to give him favourable news coverage.
"Ever since I've been in politics I am someone who has taken away (certain people's) power -- I'm the enemy," he told reporters, playing up his credentials as a self-made man who shook the status quo when he entered politics in the 1990s.
"I've seen there are some hyenas and vultures ready to leap on people ... These people should be ashamed of themselves."
He was referring to left-wing daily La Repubblica which printed transcripts of what it said were phone calls between RAI and Mediaset executives recorded by police probing a separate matter.
In one call, Debora Bergamini, a former Berlusconi assistant turned RAI executive, tells her Mediaset counterpart to air "a strong prime-time programme" to overshadow a RAI talk show on 2005 local polls which Berlusconi's centre right badly lost.
In another conversation, top RAI manager Flavio Cattaneo says he has spoken to Berlusconi's spokesman and is pushing to delay the announcement of the election results on RAI.
Bergamini and Cattaneo have denied any impropriety. Mediaset Chairman Fedele Confalonieri said the conversations were entirely normal and accused the media and government politicians of an anti-Berlusconi plot.
RAI has opened an internal investigation into the matter and Italy's communications watchdog said it was probing both firms.
The state broadcaster is at the heart of a spoils system with successive governments handing out top jobs there to reward proteges. Its board members and top managers, as well as key news editors, are picked by party affiliation.
Urban Myth
Communications Minister Paolo Gentiloni, of the centre-left government that took over after a narrow win in 2006 elections, said the transcripts prove what the left always assumed -- that Berlusconi had controlled almost all Italian TV.
"Sometimes urban myths are more than that -- sometimes they're actually true," he said. "It's a snapshot of Italy when Berlusconi controlled -- either though his family (business) or his political majority -- the entire world of television."
But Confalonieri said it was no coincidence the affair had emerged in the same week that Berlusconi announced his strategy for a political comeback by forming a new party.
He said the timing was also a manoeuvre by his enemies to ensure parliament passes a bill sponsored by Gentiloni to cap TV market shares and tighten rules on advertising.
"These documents have emerged out of the prosecutor's office because someone had an interest in it happening. The documents didn't emerge by chance, especially not right now," he said.
Police phone-taps are often leaked to the press in Italy, despite being confidential. Police never comment publicly on such leaks.
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