Viva Zapatero! (15) <!-- none onestar twostar threestar fourstar fivestar -->

This report on censorship in the Italian media would feel rather more pointed if its principal target - the mogul Silvio Berlusconi - hadn't been voted out of prime ministerial office some months ago. Comedian and impersonator Sabina Guzzanti grasped the nettle, in any case, when she decided to investigate why her satirical TV show had been cancelled by the state broadcaster RAI, apparently under government pressure.

Free speech, it seems, was not high on the list of Berlusconi's priorities, and if he didn't like what he heard he simply pulled the plug. Guzzanti confronts the various goons and yes-men who colluded in this censorship, and finds that their defence rests on the preposterous argument that people would find such satire "offensive". Never mind that "the people" weren't actually consulted - what kind of satire is it that doesn't offend? Bravo to Guzzanti, though my support stopped short of the whole-hearted once I'd seen the standard of TV satire in Italy. It's not dangerous, just dismal.