ABSTRACT
The relationship between Italian journalists and politicians has recently gone through profound changes, from a paradigmatic example of parallelism (Seymour-Ure 1974) to what is now frequently open conflict. Prime ministers from very different political cultures, like the leader of the centreright party Forza Italia, Silvio Berlusconi, or the former Communist Party leader, Massimo D'Alema, have shared a very similar antipathy to the press, which has stood accused of being more interested in controversies than in professional reporting. For their part, people who work in the information field complain about the effects of a growing ‘assault on the media’ by politicians who are accustomed to exploiting journalists’ coverage while showing contempt towards its authors.
