The editor who has been most aggressive in pursuing the story of Silvio Berlusconi’s encounters with call girls defended his coverage after the Italian Prime Minister called the newspaper “subversive”.
Ezio Mauro, Editor of La Repubblica, said he was right to demand answers from Mr Berlusconi, 72, about his behaviour and insisted that the Prime Minister’s private predilections were of serious public concern.
La Repubblica is one of the few Italian news outlets reporting regularly on the lifestyle of Mr Berlusconi's colourful lifestyle, which is rarely mentioned by the six television channels that he owns or controls and is dismissed as rubbish by his newspapers. The publishers of La Repubblica are suing Mr Berlusconi for calling it subversive.
“You can imagine in your country, what would happen if Gordon Brown met some escorts in his house and one of those escorts used a tape recorder and took pictures,” Mr Mauro, left, told The Times. “This is an embarrassing situation but the embarrassment is not private, it is political.”
La Repubblica has published ten questions, still unanswered, about Mr Berlusconi’s relationship with the aspiring model Noemi Letizia, whose 18th birthday party he attended, leading his wife to sue for divorce.
“It was Berlusconi who chose this story, not our newspaper. Berlusconi chose the stage, he chose the actors and actresses. Above all he told lies, and the lies of the powerful pose questions for journalists,” Mr Mauro said.
La Repubblica has been attacked in Italy as part of a conspiracy to bring down Mr Berlusconi, but Mr Mauro said that his newspaper was merely holding politicians to account. “There is no international conspiracy and no relationship between La Repubblica and a political plot,” he said.
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