Italian Media Trends - Essay Example

The 1994’s Italian general election’s triumph by the renowned media mogul, Silvio Berlusconi, made this media even more complex for the reason that it set up an opportunity that saw an opening to personal and public importance on information realms. The issue of a possible conflict of interests arose after his election as the country’s prime minister because it was argued that he had a business to run and at the same time a country to govern. The election of a media mogul to the highest office landmarked a watershed in the press, print media, and electronic media (Mazzoleni & Boni, 2011).

Initially, the Italian government held domination over radio and television, but currently, this is no longer the case because the telecommunication industry was liberalized in order to conform to the European Union’s policies. The political insurrection, whose foundations can be traced around 1992, saw the then political class’ hold on the media dwindle and thus the media freedom began to take shape, an occurrence that witnessed government dealings placed in the public information realms.

In the Italian television sector, the Rai and the Mediaset are the chief operators. Rai, which is publicly held, is overseen by a board that is usually signed up by the speakers of the Chambers of Deputies and Senate. To that end, Rai benefits from household licensing charges and the advertisement. The Italian television industry has undergone a tremendous transformation in the past two decades due to the influence of the Berlusconi broadcasting corporation. Over the years, the trend in the Italian media has been that economics, politics, and the media have always been strongly connected.

The media establishments have over the years been linked with the political institutions and thus issues to be communicated have always been of great importance to the two. In the recent past, this connectedness is slowly disintegrating because other new players have entered the scene, for example, the industrialists and the entrepreneurs, to whom the political institution is fast losing its influence.