<nettime> Mediaset against Telestreet (english)

[marcelo@brumaria.net]

Communique

from Franco Berardi Bifo, Marco Jacquemet and Giancarlo Vitali, authors of
the book TELESTREET: A Non-Regulated Imaginative Machine.

On March 8, 2006, in the city of Padua, where the book was printed for its
Italian edition, the authors must appear before a judge in order to
respond to the accusation of defamation leveled by Federico Confalonieri.
As the head of Mediaset, feeling himself defamed by the book and thinking
the interests of his business gravely wounded (interests that, in the
stock market, will have supposedly suffered moral and material damage as a
result of the book), Confalonieri asked that the authors of said book be
prosecuted both criminally and civilly.

--

In June 2002, in Bologna (Italy), OrfeoTV was born and in the following
months in various Italian cities street televisions were disseminated,
giving life to the Telestreet network.

>From this activity was born the book ?Telestreet: A Non-Regulated
Imaginative Machine,? which has been published in Italy, Spain and soon to
be in the United States. The book tells of the relations between political
power and the media in Italy in the last decade:

?By means of trickery and illegal operations an economic and advertising
group has appropriated for themselves an enormous media-based power, using
it without scruples to obtain political power. And this political power
has been used to protect and reinforce the interests of this same group.
With this the interests of the national community, with respect to the law
and to the most elemental norms of coexistence, have been systematically
sacrificed.?

On March 8, 2006, in the city of Padua, where the book was printed for its
Italian edition, the authors must appear before a judge in order to
respond to the accusation of defamation leveled by Federico Confalonieri.
As the head of Mediaset, feeling himself defamed by the book and thinking
the interests of his business gravely wounded (interests that, in the
stock market, will have supposedly suffered moral and material damage as a
result of the book), Confalonieri asked that the authors of said book be
prosecuted both criminally and civilly.

This is not the first time that the italian govenment of Mediaset has put
into motion means directed at eliminating free speech. The elimination
from television screens of Enzo Biagi, Santoro, Luttazzi, Sabina Guzzanti
and many others has already been inscribed in the great book of the
universal history of infamy.

Now they?re attacking a book that doesn?t deal with secret plots, that
doesn?t reveal swindles and deceptions, but that limits itself to
articulating a principle: the connection between economic power, media
power and political power kills democracy.

The owners of Mediaset and the government, who for years have accused
their adversaries of using the legal system against them, now turn to the
same system to ask it to prosecute the freedom of expression. Those who
for decades have daily gathered together millions of people in front of
their uninterrupted emission of brain-clogging electronic signals, bring
to the courts the authors of a book that speaks only of non-regulated
imagination.





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