Why is Berlusconi under friendly fire?

Why would the Wall Street Journal write a damaging article on Berlusconi? Last August, in a "Behind the Scenes" expose, the Journal reported that, "Berlusconi's Troubles Bring Attention to His Role at MGM."

The "why" assumes particular relevance and raises questions if one would consider that:

1. The "news" element of the WSJ story expired three years ago. As the Italian weekly, Panorama, pointed out the WSJ article was a "tardy scoop."

2. Until the story came out, the WSJ was Berlusconi's staunch ally. Indeed, Berlusconi would flag WSJ stories to whom he considered hostile foreign reporters, to show them how wrong they were.

So, the question that now everyone's asking: did the conservative WSJ have a change of heart and perhaps decided that it too could no longer support Berlusconi's rightist government? But, why? Plus, why do it so flamboyantly with a right-hand column, front cover, 477-line story, when a small, more newsy report would have sufficed?

It should be noted that the column space reserved for the Berlusconi article was in what is considered WSJ's prime coverage area. To the Italian daily La Voce, the WSJ article only indicated that the item became big news only after Berlusconi established leadership over the Italian government.

Nevertheless, it is pointed out that Berlusconi could certainly have given the WSJ more "newsy" opportunities for criticism, as critical articles in the Financial Times, The Economist, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times and Le Monde, among others, can clearly attest.

The Journal assigned two of its Paris bureau, big-gun writers, Peter Gumbel and Peter Truell, to report on a story that Italian newspapers and magazines amply covered in 1991.

The thrust of the story was that Berlusconi acted against the SEC rules when his Fininvest helped financier Giancarlo Parretti to buy the MGM Studios in 1990.

The SEC, America's finance regulatory agency, investigated Fininvest in late 1991 and it is still going on. In 1992, Carlo Bernasconi, one of Fininvest's board members, was called by the SEC to testify in Washington, D.C.

However, the WSJ seems to have wrongly set the incriminating subterfuge at $100 million, when according to Panorama, the actual sum pledged by Berlusconi was $168 million and not at all occult.

The WSJ reporters did not return Movie/Video Age's calls, but in an interview with Corriere dell Sera, they implied that Italians were surprised by their report because Italians don't really understand the Anglo-Saxon free press tradition.

Nevertheless, in Italy the WSJ article was viewed as some sort of "signal" for Berlusconi that, unfortunately, not even Berlusconi's attentive watchers at his nemesis, L'Espresso, could decipher.

Many Italians were quick in recalling how the WSJ was run by former CIA agents. Americans, on the other hand, tend to be little Italian journalists considered biased. On the operative style, the American press report on news items that either have been assigned to reporters or edited at several levels. Italian journalists are often assigned space to fill with no editing or guidance from above.

It is also pointed out that the American press isn't as holy as it claims to be. The New York Times' newsgathering activities, for example, are carefully studied at New York University journalism classes, which clearly point to the paper's manipulating nature.

But, one doubts that we're now facing journalism culture clashes. What's behind the WSJ's motives remain intriguing as well as revealing.