From WNYC in New York, this is NPR's On the Media.

I'm Brooke Gladstone.

And I'm Bob Garfield. Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi watched the foreign press flock to his country to cover one of the big stories this week.

Leaders of the Catholic Church gathered in Rome to lay out a policy for disciplining priests charged with sexual abuse.

The conservative leader didn't seem to mind the presence of so many foreign journalists for a few days.

It's the local media he seems bent on dominating.

Berlusconi's latest targets are two Italian journalists and a satirist who have criticized him on TV in the past.

Away with them, Berlusconi said recently. They have made criminal use of public television. These are no idle threats when you consider

Berlusconi's status. Aside from owning three of the four private national stations,

as Prime Minister, Berlusconi officially controls all three state-run networks in Italy,

cumulatively known as RAI.

And with recent appointments of his friends to high positions at two of those public networks,

Italian TV is looking more Berlusconi-esque than ever.

Joining us from Rome is NPR senior European correspondent Sylvia

Pajoli. Sylvia, welcome to O.T.M. Thank you. Nice to be here. Well, it appears that this

latest outrage has, at long last, gotten the Italian public up in arms. There were a little late

to be distressed by Berlusconi's behavior, or am I missing

something? Well, you know, let's remember something that Berlusconi won by only 500,000 votes,

but thanks to the Italian electoral law, kind of winner takes all, he has a very comfortable

majority in Parliament. So to say that he has actually has, you know, a huge mandate

from the people from the voters is not really correct. And in past months, there have been a lot of

demonstrations mainly organized by intellectuals, professors and so forth, protesting his conflict of

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