My colleagues at the Italic Institute once coined the witty phrase “Hollywood-Media Axis,” noting the not-so-subtle link between Tinsel Town and the mainstream media—specifically, how the two of them incestuously promote the Big Lie that Italian culture is essentially a criminal culture.
peddling fantasy
The chief instigators of the Big Lie, of course, were another duo: Mario Puzo, who wrote the 1969 pulp novel The Godfather, and Francis Ford Coppola, who gave Puzo’s pulp the veneer of “art” in his 1972 film version. That both book and film romanticized the mafia—just as surely as filmmaker D.W. Griffith turned the KKK into heroes in his 1915 Civil War masterpiece, Birth of a Nation—is a point which Hollywood and the media continue to ignore.
If you need an example of the Hollywood-Media Axis, look no further than the July 17th headline of an on-line article by Al Jazeera, a Qatari-based independent news organization. Al Jazeera has been giving both Israelis and Arabs, and even the Americans, fits since its inception in 1996. (The source of the fits is its largely unbiased reportage on happenings in the Middle East.)
A serious article on a serious subject—the passage of a new law in Italy to protect families trapped within mafia gangs—opens with the jokey headline: “Offer he can’t refuse: Is Italy’s mafia law breaking crime or families”? The use of a famous quote from The Godfather is clearly out-of-line.
This journalistic sleight-of-hand, the blurring of fantasy with fact, is what is meant by the “Hollywood-Media Axis.” A fictional film is used to sanitize the ugly reality of thug life in Italy. Instead of exposing the localized brutality of the mafia, the Hollywood-Media Axis has created the mythology of an all-powerful criminal organization with worldwide tentacles. And in the figure of Don Vito Corleone, the Hollywood-Media Axis created a heroic figure of masculine strength—so much so that both a dead Iraqi dictator (Saddam Hussein) and two living presidents (Obama and Trump) adore the movie.
First, what is this new law?
Called Liberi di Scegliere (Free to Choose), it provides government assistance to wives, young adults and children seeking to escape mafia families.
To quote the article, “Under the legislation, people under the age of 25 and relatives who care for them may be relocated outside their home region, provided with education and psychological support and, where necessary, given new identities, expanding across the nation a pioneering program first launched in the southern region of Calabria…The programme (sic) gained momentum in 2011 after some mothers from ‘Ndrangheta crime families began approaching Roberto Di Bello (president of the juvenile court in Reggio Calabria) in secret. Several asked for help getting their sons out of Calabria because they feared the boys would otherwise be recruited into the clan, killed, or sent to prison.”
The article goes on: “Don Luigi Ciotti, an anti-mafia priest and campaigner, welcomed the legislation, expressing ‘enormous joy’ over the protection it would provide to people leaving mafia environments…The president of the Parliamentary Anti-Mafia Commission, Chiara Colosimo, said: ‘This law is born from listening, from suffering transformed into responsibility, from the idea that the state must be present precisely where crime claims to decide people’s fate…Today, we don’t just celebrate the approval of a law; today, we celebrate the victory of freedom.”
Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni echoed those words, calling the law “a new prevention tool” and an “alternative of freedom for those born into mafia families who do not want to grow up to become a mafioso.”
She concluded: “Children, youngsters, and women will have the chance to choose their own path, and the state will provide them with the necessary protection to build a free, honest, and safe life elsewhere.”
It’s important to note that the program isn’t a quid pro quo like our own Witness Protection Program. Families aren’t forced to denounce relatives involved in criminal gangs in order to gain government safety. They can simply choose to leave. Sounds reasonable. Any objections?
A few. Some politicians feel that the new law gives the state too much power, however positive its aims. A few Catholic bishops said that it would undermine parental or familial ties. And, of course, patriarchal mob bosses in Sicily, Puglia, and Calabria won’t like having their authority questioned.
Yet has the Hollywood-Media Axis ever done any movies or articles on the actual victims of mob violence—both their genuine victims (other rivals; or non-mobsters who cross them) as well as the wives, sons and daughters caught in the cross-hairs? I have to strain my brain to come up with any.
So, what are the after-effects of this “soft-on-crime” approach viz a via the Hollywood-Media Axis?
There are several.
1) Objective journalism, particularly in America, has been infected with hype. One example, amongst many, is a 1986 cover story in FORTUNE Magazine called “The 50 Biggest Mafia Bosses in America.” It lists Anthony “Fat Tony” Salerno as the wealthiest and most powerful mobster in America, using nothing but hearsay to put his net worth at between $50 million-$100 million. So much for factual research!
2) Two-bit crooks with Italian surnames, often arrested merely for illegal gambling, are constantly, immediately identified as being “mafia” or “La Cosa Nostra” members, or “associates of organized crime.” One tag fits all. This ethnic profiling continues even in 2026 (e.g., the recent NBA gambling scandal).
3) Unending movies about Italian gangsters (over 500—and counting—since The Godfather!) pollute the public’s consciousness. Hollywood movies say, “These are the real Italians!” No ifs, ands, or buts.
This conditioning affects both journalists and moviegoers, to wit: Journalists inflate petty crooks puffed up by nothing more than Hollywood hype, and moviegoers blindly swallow the images they see both in print and on movie screens. The idea of Italians not being criminals is seen as strange or unrealistic.
4) The nation of Italy itself is burdened with this shadowy image. Every culture and nation, in every part of the world, has crime and criminal gangs. Indeed, the oldest criminal gangs on Planet Earth are probably the Tongs of China, which pre-date the Sicilian mafia by nearly 200 years (1644). Yet do average journalists or members of the public associate Chinese/Chinese Americans with criminal behavior?
Instead, despite their relatively small numbers in Sicily and elsewhere, criminals in Italy are seen as ubiquitous, roaming all over the nation the way cockroaches do slum apartments.
Americans know Mario Puzo and Francis Ford Coppola, the Hollywood hype artists. How many know Paolo Borsellino and Giovanni Falcone, the heroic judges who lost their lives battling the mafia in the early 1990s? Their efforts inspired the Addiopizzo (“Goodbye Extortion Payment”) movement of 2004, whereby Sicilian business owners refused to pay a street tax to local thugs. Today, the once-volcanic (in both senses) island of Sicily enjoys peace and stability thanks to such collective bravery.
Yet, as the Al-Jazeera article shows, the Hollywood-Media Axis remains, both locally and globally. –BDC
Regarding the recent NBA gambling scandal, Newsday‘s “ace” mafia reporter Anthony Destefano loves adding plenty of standard Axis adjectives to his reporting of this crime. Out of a 400-word article he included 68 descriptors of the Italian American perps. “reputed members of the —-crime family” “reputed ties to NY crime families” son of the late —crime family member” “reputed high-ranking member of the —crime family” “alleged member of the —crime family”and “reputed mobster.”
Could anyone with an Italian surname survive being labeled “reputed” or “alleged” How do you disprove it?
The power of the press! No one monitors those who do the monitoring. Richard Nixon, of all people, was the first to bring up this very important issue. If or when the press taints you, there is no recourse unless you sue them for defamation. Average folk don’t have $$.
The only hope is for editors to demand retractions or to openly apologize. Yet both instances have become rare over the decades. The press craps on you; the stain remains.
And we (by “we,” I mean both our society and the news industry) still allow former political operatives–George Stephanopoulos is the most egregious example–to become “objective” journalists on mainstream TV. Total farce. He and others push their agendas.
I’ve written 11 books on being an Italian American girl in the 1950s, trying to avoid being “matched” to a young man, not of her choosing. No murders, kidnaping etc. No wonder nobody buys my books. I even sent one of my books to the late Garry Marshall, who returned it and kindly refused to consider it. Of course, no blood, no murders etc. Hollywood really did a number on us Italian Americans. Boo!!