Matteo
Renzi’s king of spin
Filippo
Sensi is called the Alistair Campbell to Italy’s Tony Blair.
By PATRICK
BROWNE 11/7/16, 5:30 AM CET Updated 11/7/16, 7:16 AM CET
ROME — Italian
Prime Minister Matteo Renzi affectionately calls the man behind his
communications strategy “Nomfup” — a nickname taken from the
phrase “not my f—ing problem.”
Nomfup — a 48-year
old Roman named Filippo Sensi — coined his own moniker, using the
catchphrase of fictional spin-doctor Malcolm Tucker from the BBC
comedy “The Thick of It.” Foul-mouthed and aggressive, Tucker is
a thinly-veiled caricature of Tony Blair’s communications chief
Alastair Campbell.
Sensi denies being
the Campbell to Renzi’s Blair, describing himself via email as a
“humble press aide” who is “too shy to do an interview.”
But to those who
know him, Sensi is one of Renzi’s closest confidants and an expert
media manipulator.
Zipping between
ministries in Rome on his scooter, Sensi spends his days desperately
trying to ensure everybody stays on message. Nothing is left to
chance. He carefully controls which journalists have access to Renzi
and blacklists those who are overly critical of the prime minister,
just like Campbell did.
“Alastair was an
idol to me and Filippo,” said Stefano Menichini, head of
communications at the Chamber of Deputies, the lower house of
parliament. “The way he and Blair were able to communicate a new
message which appealed to traditional non-Labour voters was very
exciting.”
In the mid 1990s,
Menichini and Sensi worked in the press office of former Rome mayor
Francesco Rutelli. Working as a political staffer in Rome over the
next decade, Sensi’s interest in Blairism quickly gave way to a
fascination with political spin.
After leaving
Rutelli’s office, Sensi and Menichini worked at a small national
newspaper called Europa, which was heavily funded by the center-left
Democratic Party (PD).
“Spin is a dirty
word. Certainly, by the time he finishes the job [Sensi] will have
fewer friends than when he started” — Stefano Menichini
As the paper’s
assistant editor, Sensi began a blog called Nomfup which focused on
political communications in the U.K. and U.S. Within a year the blog
made global headlines for its role in revelations that forced Liam
Fox — then U.K. defense minister, now international trade secretary
— to resign.
Fox was brought down
by a video that Sensi unearthed and passed to Britain’s Observer
newspaper that proved that the Tory MP had broken ministerial rules
by allowing a close friend, businessman Adam Werritty, to sit in on
government meetings.
In the wake of the
scoop, Sensi was self-effacing, telling the press it was all merely
about “joining the dots” and “doing a few searches on YouTube.”
Sensi’s ability to
join the dots is hard to beat. Fueled by what one former colleague
called “industrial quantities of Coca-Cola and fast food,” Sensi
can reportedly find “almost anything” online.
He is renowned for
his ability to mine the internet, spot the latest political trends
and make sense of big data, and he gets paid handsomely for doing so,
earning €170,000 a year — €50,000 more than his boss.
“It was inevitable
he would land a big story,” said Jeff Israely, former Rome bureau
chief of Time Magazine and a close friend of Sensi.
“He is so well
connected both personally and electronically. He always knew what was
going on in foreign journalists’ countries before we did. Months
before [Barack] Obama burst onto the U.S. political scene in 2004, he
was telling me ‘you gotta see this guy’.”
The Renzi years
Obama wasn’t the
only up-and-coming politician Sensi earmarked for success back in
2004.
In Italy, the
29-year-old Matteo Renzi had just been elected president of the
region of Florence and was presenting himself as a radical
alternative to Italy’s political establishment.
After being
introduced by mutual contacts in the PD, the pair soon formed a close
friendship. Sensi was quick to offer advice and expertise for free in
order to help the youthful and ambitious Renzi reach his political
potential.
In the following
years, Sensi was influential in shaping Renzi’s image as the rising
star of Italian politics, using his contacts to get him featured in
the international press while he was still a political greenhorn.
The hard work
eventually paid off. By mid-2013, when Renzi became the Democratic
Party’s youngest ever leader, it was clear who would be in charge
of his media strategy.
Then Renzi called to
ask me if I would let him leave the paper to join his team, I warned
him not to waste his talents by employing him as ‘just’ a press
officer,” he added.
“Filippo and Renzi
have a very close relationship, and Sensi is the only non-Florentine
in Renzi’s inner circle — all the other aides have been with
Renzi since his time as Florence mayor,” Israely said. “Sensi
certainly seems to have the prime minister’s ear.”
How much influence
Sensi has over policy decisions is unclear, but he is central to the
positive coverage the prime minister has enjoyed in both domestic and
foreign media since coming to power two-and-a-half years ago.
According to
independent Italian media watchdog Agcom, in the first eight months
after coming to power, 18 percent of total news time on Italy’s
state broadcasters featured Renzi or a member of his cabinet. That’s
50 percent more coverage than Silvio Berlusconi enjoyed during the
first eight months of his last cabinet — and he owned large chunks
of the media.
“You can see
Sensi’s influence in the ‘pop politics’ Renzi tends to employ,”
said Massimiliano Panarari, an expert in political communication at
Rome’s Luiss University.
Smiling and jovial,
Renzi’s approach to press conferences can be unorthodox. He
frequently presents the government’s progress and plans to
journalists using Powerpoint slides, as if making a business pitch.
Spinning out of
control?
Just like Campbell,
the spin-loving Sensi has made plenty of enemies and faced criticism
for his heavy-handed efforts to control Renzi’s message and image.
“I can’t
remember a period like this,” said David Allegranti, the author of
two critical Renzi biographies. “Even Berlusconi’s last
government had a much more cordial relationship with the press, but
the climate at the moment is very difficult for journalists.”
Sensi’s attempts
to ensure the country’s media outlets express as many pro-Renzi
views as possible begin with a Monday morning email to newspaper
editors outlining the prime minister’s “theme for the week.”
An
increasingly likely defeat in next month’s constitutional
referendum looms large for Renzi and his communications guru.
Editors then receive
further emails containing the PM’s daily message, while group SMS
and What’sApp messages pass quotes and details from meetings at
Palazzo Chigi directly to friendly journalists: those who are too
critical of Renzi are quickly taken off the mailing list.
A similar scheme
operates for TV news, with members of Sensi’s team reportedly
emailing a steady stream of carefully chosen photos and video
footage.
“He carefully
selects which MPs can go on TV and which shows they can speak to,”
Allegranti said. “He will try to create problems for any shows that
are too critical.”
Sensi’s famous web
wizardry also comes into play. From a “war room” in Palazzo
Chigi, he and his staff analyze how the press and public are
responding to the prime minister. The aim is to refine the message,
blacklist hostile journalists and counter political opponents’
claims as quickly as possible.
“Spin is a dirty
word.” Menichini said. “It’s really just the less savory aspect
of being a political press aide. Certainly, by the time he finishes
the job he will have fewer friends than when he started.”
That’s already
happening, and there is evidence that his powers may be waning.
Italy’s biggest selling daily, Corriere della Sera, is increasingly
critical of Renzi and the PD is reeling from heavy defeats in local
elections at which they lost control of Rome and Turin.
Darkening clouds
Things could be
about to get a lot worse. Renzi promised to resign if he lost a
referendum on controversial proposals to limit the power and
influence of Italy’s upper house. That vote will take place on
December 4.
In order to ensure
the vote goes to plan, Renzi paid €400,000 to enlist the services
of Obama’s former campaign chief Jim Messina. The latest polls
predict his proposed reforms will be narrowly defeated. According to
an October opinion poll by Euromedia research, as many as 53 percent
of voters will block the changes at the ballot box.
With a less than a
month to go until the referendum, the media can smell blood and
Sensi’s efforts to stem the flow have earned him increasing column
inches in the Italian press, where he is painted as the ruthless
mastermind behind Renzi’s slick propaganda machine.
Such attention was
ultimately the undoing of Sensi’s idol Campbell, whose attempts to
manufacture an endlessly positive image of his master in the British
press eroded voters’ faith in the government. Nomfup is trying to
succeed where his role model failed.
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