The newspaper Repubblica publishes the transcriptions of some phone tappings relative to the year 2004 and 2005 that would demonstrate that the leaders of RAI and those of Mediaset, group property of the ex-prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, were reconciling the programming of his channels.

According to the newspaper, two big groups of the Italian television, "that would have to compete for the conquest of the hearings, they were exchanging information on the programming and were reconciling strategies at the time of covering the important events".

"The Repubblica" indicates the "collaborators" of Berlusconi like the "weavers of this network, composed by hundreds of calls every day in that one was exchanging information and they were organized up to the smallest details".

The phone tappings published in the newspaper are included in the investigation on the failure of the institute of opinion polls Hdc of property of Luigi Crespi, ex-collaborator of the businessman and conservative leader.

The newspaper quotes, especially, the calls exchange between Debora Bergamini, leader of the RAI, and Niccoló Querci, important manager of Mediaset, and both Berlusconi ex-assistants.

In the intercepted calls one speaks from the anticipations of the topics of the programs even about the strategies to be adopted before the general elections of 2006.

Before the revelations of the newspaper, the RAI has communicated that has opened an internal investigation and has begun to study "the possibility of initiatives of tutelage".

For his part, Mediaset qualified the news about "stupidity", on having thought that it is clear that two groups they compete every day, and added "that it is normal, that as it happens in the newspapers, the directors call and consult between them".


(Agencies, 22/11/07)