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ROME (Reuters) - Lucia Ricci was beginning to think Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi was following her.

The media tycoon's face beamed down at her from billboards near her home. He grinned at her from magazines. When she switched on the car radio, she heard him and when she turned on the television, there he was, exchanging jokes on late-night comedy shows and charming grandmothers on breakfast television.

"He's amazing. Amazing. I kept thinking he was going to step out of a poster," she said, laughing down the telephone from Milano Tre, a new town on Milan's outskirts built by Berlusconi early in his business career.

Berlusconi's month-long media onslaught on television and radio alternately entertained and appalled many Italians until it was brought to an end in February when strict broadcasting rules kicked in ahead of the April 9 and 10 general election.

The billionaire, whose family controls Italy's largest private broadcaster Mediaset, is trailing in the polls ahead of the vote, and his media blitz was aimed at spreading his feel-good message and lambasting the center-left opposition.

Berlusconi's critics believe the prime minister has single-handedly compromised press freedom with a grip on the media that is unparalleled among the world's seven most industrialized nations.

But if opinion polls are correct and Berlusconi's center-right government loses the April vote, Italy will not miraculously spring to the top of press freedom tables.

"Berlusconi's conflict of interests is well noted. If he loses, that will diminish. But Italian media has always been politicized, to the left and the right, and that will continue," said Michele Polo, a professor at Milan's Bocconi University.

TYCOONS

Reporters without Borders ranked Italy 42nd in its 2005 press freedom table, below Benin and El Salvador.

The media watchdog said the lowly ranking was partly because Berlusconi directly and indirectly controls as much as 85 percent of Italian television and also because of judicial pressure on journalists to reveal their sources.    Continued ...

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