«I have to dictate a press release»- Corriere.it

At three in the morning Silvio Berlusconi picks up the phone. He calls the switchboard of the Ansa press agency. He has to deny an article. It is alone, in Palazzo Grazioli, his Roman residence. He is answered by a dimafonista, a professional figure who has now disappeared, the one to whom journalists dictate the news over the telephone. “I’m the Prime Minister, I have to dictate a statement.” Mario’s answer (the name is fictitious): “And I’m Napoleon”. Berlusconi insists: “Look, it’s me.” The dimaphonist convinces himself, goes white, it’s unusual, it practically doesn’t make sense. Usually they don’t call politicians, there are staff. The story is not short, it has never been told, for a few days at Ansa they will talk about nothing else. The dimafonista gathers courage: «Okay, give me the title». Berlusconi: «What title? You must write my statement.’ Mario replies: «Title!!». Every news has a title, are the rules. The head of government loses patience for a moment, but in the end he is convinced, together with Mario at three in the morning they prepare a title together, which will be followed by the declaration. At seven in the morning when the employees arrive at Ansa, Mario has an incredible story to tell.

It wasn’t incredible for Berlusconi’s spokesman at the time, Paolo Bonaiuti. He’s been used to everything for years, and in some cases it’s the journalists who inform him, not the other way around. In some chaotic days, Bonaiuti calls the editorial staff: «What do you know about Berlusconi? What did he tell you today?” The world upside down. Berlusconi talks everywhere, in the elevator at Montecitorio, while buying paintings and furniture from an antiques dealer in Brussels, in his backyard. One winter evening he returns to Palazzo Grazioli later than usual, it’s raining, at one in the morning he finds a reporter for the newspaper Libero in front of the door: «What are you doing here? Don’t you have a family? Come on, you’re getting wet.” After an hour, unbeknownst to everyone, the reporter had an exclusive interview and several scoops.

There is a minor, unpublished story, sometimes funny, sometimes the craziest in the world, which describes a marginal but significant slice of the communication of the greatest political communicator that Italy has ever had. It is the story of the symbiotic relationship, incredible when seen from the outside, that Berlusconi had for at least 20 years with reporters who followed him everywhere, 24 hours a day, in Italy and abroad. He slept little, they did the same. The important thing was to be there, at the right time and place. As happened to our Marco Cremonesi: the villa on Lake Como, about forty journalists and cameras waiting outside, our colleague chose a diversion. He looked out over the side railings of the villa: he was immediately stopped by the carabinieri, but then Berlusconi arrived, “come on, climb over”. Marco pierced his foot, in return he had a lunch, some champagne, an interview under the garden patio.

Even before social media, in the early days of Facebook, part of Berlusconi’s communication was done in this way, he had no rules, except that of very strict marking. Sometimes the unthinkable happened: the most shrewd journalists had managed to calculate the time it took Berlusconi to get from Palazzo Chigi to Palazzo Grazioli. A few hundred meters, a few minutes. At least six motorcade cars. They stood on the sidewalk, began to gesticulate when they saw the President’s armored Audi, maybe they raised their voices. He knew them and had the procession blocked. He rolled down the window, the traffic paralyzed, the premier’s words gathered in the middle of the road. Vincenzo Lamanna, now deputy director of Askanews, happened to be the protagonist of this incredible mechanism one evening. He was still precarious, without a contract, they paid him by article to the Giornale, he had been sent to Sardinia to follow the Cavaliere’s holidays. By midnight he had finished writing, but he was not satisfied. He learned of a dinner in progress at Villa Certosa, he had the number of one of the guests. Fortune favors the bold: «Do you want me to hand you the President? He is here with me, he has just entered the living room… ». Vincenzo was dumbfounded, he spent ten minutes on the phone with the Prime Minister, whom he, moreover, did not know. “President, look, they fire me”.

Sometimes even a touch of desperation could have an effect. A couple of colleagues, myself included, happened to take a not indifferent “hole”, we had arrived late in the place where Berlusconi had talked at length with the competition. “But I didn’t say anything,” he shielded himself, underestimating the power of his words. In both cases we managed to recover: the Ansa reporter was welcomed into his car, he interviewed him sitting on his lap, there was no other space. I had a promise: “I’ll call you at the Corriere in a couple of hours.” The motion of affection had worked, after two hours the phone rang. Even in these cases, his press office was in the dark about everything. The relationship was one-to-one. Often he was the one looking for the reporter, it was enough to show up, pierce the safety net, attract his attention. The revolving doors of the Conrad hotel in Brussels, where Berlusconi slept for the European Councils, were worth a press conference. They were very large glass doors, the complete revolution lasted almost ten seconds. The trick was to sneak into the pile, take a few shoves, whisper a question. Berlusconi almost never disappointed, but only the lucky one who had risked breaking a rib got news in return. Augusto Minzolini, today in the Giornale, prided himself on being more agile than the others. But if for Berlusconi it was also a game, of which he pulled the strings, for journalists it was also a stress. The night he called Obama “tanned” he was in Moscow. The adjective went around the world. At one in the morning he returned to the Kempiski hotel, after a dinner with Putin, the newspapers in Italy were now closed, he still wanted to talk. Sometimes terror stimulates courage, one of us said four words to him: “President, go to bed.” His eyes lit up for a moment with the excess of confidence, but then he understood and slipped into the lift.

He rarely resigned himself: once, at the end of a closed-door outburst with Gianfranco Fini, he was approached in the Chamber by a colleague. He turned to Gianni Letta, who was accompanying him: “Can I at least say something to him?” In that case it was the arm of his most trusted collaborator who silently facilitated entry into the lift.

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