Silvio Berlusconi and the Silencing of the Bulls

The Italian Prime Minister

should let the press do its job.

Silvio Berlusconi's string of lawsuits against European media would be hilarious, if they didn't also threaten to be so effective. The Italian premier has asserted that press freedom does not include the liberty to insult. Respectfully, we disagree: No journalist ever needed a lawyer to write of his leader's heroism.

"They are attacking us like enraged bulls, but here there is a bullfighter who is not scared of anything," Mr. Berlusconi told a business gathering in Milan this week. And yet we can't recall the last time a toreador unleashed a team of lawyers to keep a bull from braying. The story of the newly prudish third-time premier—whose government has passed a law exempting him from prosecution while in office, and whose broadcasting firm's channels dominate national ratings—suing such monoliths as French weekly Le Nouvel Observateur and Italian daily La Repubblica for daring to chronicle allegations of his dalliances, is a diverting Italian farce for most of us.

But for the organs involved, Mr. Berlusconi's lawsuits are no joke. This is not the first time the Italian Prime Minister has sought to dictate coverage through financial intimidation. In 2001, he sued The Economist for an article arguing he was unfit to lead. A Milanese court ruled in favor of the magazine last year, and required Mr. Berlusconi to pay costs.

Even given Italian laws protecting personal honor, it is hard to give much credit to Mr. Berlusconi's current claims. Yet it is all too easy to imagine, given the financial strains facing many media companies, that the specter of lawyers' fees to come will make editors think twice before putting any spine into their Roman coverage. Tales of call-girls and 18-year-olds aside, we can imagine journalists publishing far more important stories about Mr. Berlusconi's governance—of his relationships with Tripoli and Tehran, perhaps, of the effects of his economic nationalism, of his treatment of immigrants or his broken promises to cut taxes—that might also damage what he suddenly imagines to be his pristine reputation.

But if Mr. Berlusconi loves his country as passionately as he claims to, he will drop the suits and let the press do its job.

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