Silvio Berlusconi has been railing against this 'small newspaper'. What is his problem with the Guardian?

Reported by the Guardian as having made such a hash of preparations for the G8 summit in L'Aquila that Italy's continued membership of that elite group of nations was now in doubt, the Italian prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, dismissed the story as "a colossal blunder by a small newspaper". His foreign minister, Franco Frattini, then chipped in with a personal hope that the Guardian would be "expelled from the great newspapers of the world" - as if "great newspapers" were a club that this "small newspaper" had somehow joined under false pretences. One wonders in any case which newspapers Frattini would admit to the club, given that most European papers (including all the Italian ones not owned by the prime minister) are as critical of Berlusconi as the Guardian has been, and that even the revered New York Times yesterday accused the Italian government of "inexcusably lax planning" for the summit. If the New York Times does not qualify as a "great" newspaper, it must be a very exclusive club indeed. In its own leading article yesterday, the Guardian condemned the Italians as a whole for continuing to give almost 50% support to Berlusconi despite all the scandals - private and public - in which he has been involved. It said that "until Italians start demanding serious standards from their leaders, the country is perhaps not the best venue for serious world summits". This, in my opinion, is a little unfair. Continue ... http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jul/09/silvio-berlusconi-guardian