Newsweek, last week, carried a quite astonishing piece on Silvio Berlusconi’s first 100 days in office. The glowing tribute stopped short of suggesting that Trenitalia now runs on time, but only just (coincidentally, despite the fact that it was a major election issue, Alitalia crops up nowhere in the piece).
Astonishing because it may well be the first English language report to fully abide by all the rules of the new ‘Italian school’ of journalism, with all the rigour that entails.
Lesson number one – Numbers!
So, we’re told that Berlusconi enjoys an approval rating of %55. The tired ‘old school’ journalism so prominent in Anglo-Saxon countries would perhaps have wasted space by citing the source of the poll, along with tedious details like who paid for it, or the trend that it may suggest (for example, an IPSOS poll at the end of May gave Berlusconi an approval rating of 56-57%, while the latest one at the end of july, after parliamentary immunity for S.B was pushed through, showed him dipping down to 53%).
Lesson number two – Make it official!
Get it straight from the horse’s mouth, or in this case from showman prime minister himself. “[regarding the rubbish cris in Naples] In July, Parliament approved Berlusconi’s plan to open new landfills and incinerators, and permit soldiers to protect temporary landfills from angry residents. Days later Berlusconi said 50,000 tons of trash had been removed”. No need, then, to run any checks on that.
Here it’s worth making a brief aside, to discuss some of the excellent new tools for journalists conducting research. If you need to do a piece, for example, on school bullying, or crazy pets (both essential items for any serious newspaper/newscast – obviously), then the first point of call is youtube. Caution though, as our studious Newsweek journo is well aware, the golden rule for research with youtube is never, repeat never refer to participatory networks on youtube that may, with video, throw into question an official source.
So, when our Newsweek reporter writes “Emblematic has been his ability to clean up Naples”, he’s dead-right not to go searching for any evidence to the contrary.
Lesson number three – Simplify!
If it can’t be said in a snappy sentence, then it probably isn’t worth reporting – according to the Italian school. Following this axiom, we have this brilliantly condensed piece of electoral history:
“But Berlusconi, the 72-year-old media mogul, cannily exploited a 2005 electoral law that wiped out these small parties to win a surprise landslide victory from which the opposition is still trying to recover.”
There isn’t enough time in the day, or space in print obviously to explain the difference between drafting a law in full knowledge of the benefits it gives your particluar political grouping and exploiting it. Keep it simple.
On the same theme, best to not mention organised crime’s role in the Naples rubbish emergency – reducing it to a simple case of mistrtusting the competence of local left-wing administration:
“Naples, buried for months under trash in part because the surrounding communities simply [emphasis added] did not trust the government to manage the landfills”
After all, if you give space to the well-credited view that the Camorra in Naples have a guiding hand in every stage of the waste business, then you’ll have to go looking for answers as to what role they’ve had in the ‘solution’ so efficiently administered by Berluska.
Lesson Four – Feel the hand of History on your shoulder
Readers like a context, so where possible subtle but flattering comparisons to past Italian statesmen can add to the ‘colour’ of a piece, thus adding journalistic value
“In his first 100 days in office, Silvio Berlusconi may have done the impossible: to a degree unprecedented in modern Italian history, he asserted control over this seemingly ungovernable nation”
and
“they are demanding security, financial and otherwise. And Berlusconi is delivering, with an iron-fist-in-velvet-glove competence”
Exemplary journalism, of a kind.