A second argument, also used by Ginsborg, is that they didn’t do more because they were afraid it would be unpopular. That is, many centre-left politicians reasoned something like this:
- anyone who would support our taking action against Berlusconi is likely to vote for us anyway; but
- there are a large number of people who would oppose action against Berlusconi; and
- we want some of these people to vote for us
Why did they assume that there were a large number of people who would oppose action against Berlusconi? The assumption might seem puzzling: who would object to less political control over the media, if not the politicians?
Yet on the one occasion when voters were presented with concrete proposals to limit Berlusconi’s influence over the media, they rejected them. In 1995 voters had the chance to vote on three propositions:
- to limit the number of television networks held by any one person;
- to limit the number of commercial breaks;
- to break-up the advertising duopoly held by Rai and Mediaset;
They voted against all three, 57:43, 51:49, 51:49 [results here].
I doubt, however, that the referenda are a very good way of explaining why the left was shy about raising the issue. Referendums have been ignored before: most notably on the public financing of political parties. Voters likely didn’t understand the measures — Fininvest’s advertisements against the referendum were judged misleading by the sectoral watchdog and by the courts. And even if tackling the issue was unpopular, the electoral campaign didn’t need to put it front-and-centre. Instead, it could have been buried deep in the manifesto.
The referendum did show that there was pushing these measures would be unlikely to win additional votes. But I think it’s a stretch to say it should that pushing these measures would lose votes.
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