The publisher of Italy’s second largest-selling newspaper is suing Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.
Mr Berlusconi described La Repubblica as "subversive", prompting L’Espresso media group to sue for defamation.
L’Espresso also publishes a magazine of the same name, and both publications have led recent investigations into Mr Berlusconi’s personal life.
The group also said the PM had discouraged businesses from buying advertising space in its publications.
According to a complaint lodged with a Milan court, the group’s lawyers have also accused Mr Berlusconi of abuse of office and of flouting market rules.
Mr Berlusconi’s own media empire spans television, newspapers, advertising and film.
He has not yet responded to the allegations.
‘No saint’
Earlier this week, the publications released transcripts and audio from what they said was a night Mr Berlusconi, 72, spent with an escort.
"I am not a saint, you’ve all understood that. I hope those at La Repubblica also understand it"
Silvio Berlusconi
Italian Prime Minister
The prime minister’s lawyer had warned the media against publishing details of the tapes, which he said were "totally fictitious and the product of the imagination".
On Wednesday, in his first public remarks since the audio and transcripts were published, Mr Berlusconi sought to brush off the scandal, which does not appear to have dented his popularity in Italy.
"I am not a saint, you’ve all understood that," he said.
"I hope those at La Repubblica also understand it."
Patrizia D’Addario told L’Espresso she had made the tapes during a visit to Mr Berlusconi’s official Rome residence.
In one conversation, a man can be heard telling a woman to wait for him in "Putin’s" bed after having a shower.
Mr Berlusconi – whose personal life has been under scrutiny since his wife filed for divorce in May – has not denied Ms D’Addario attended a party at his home, but insists he did not pay for sex.
Investigation
The recordings of conversations purportedly between the prime minister and Ms D’Addario were published several weeks after the former model gave them to magistrates investigating Giampaolo Tarantini, a businessman from the southern Italian city of Bari, who is suspected of corruption and abetting prostitution.
In one exchange, a male voice said to be Mr Berlusconi’s can be heard saying: "I’m going to have a shower too… So wait for me in the big bed if you finish first."
A woman’s voice, purportedly that of Ms D’Addario, asks: "Which big bed… Putin’s", reportedly a reference to a four-poster bed which Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin used during a recent official visit.
Ms D’Addario, 42, says she made recordings of her encounter with Mr Berlusconi "so that nobody could deny I had been there".
Last month, she said she had been paid more than 1,000 euros (£862; $1,420) to attend a party at the Palazzo Grazioli in October, in the company of other women.</p
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I apologise for Berlusconi
I’m sorry for our prime minister’s predictable reaction to a story about G8 summit preparations, please keep the spotlight on Italy
As a member of the Italian parliament and former magistrate who ensured that many corrupt politicians and businessmen were brought to justice in the 1990s, I wish to apologise to the editor and staff of the Guardian newspaper for the utterly predictable reaction of prime minister Silvio Berlusconi and our foreign minister, Franco Frattini.
The Guardian does its best to keep the public informed. In Italy this government is not accustomed to free debate, or to hearing the truth being told. While sections of the article dealing with preparations for the G8 summit may be debatable, the rest of it contains little that can be refuted.
However, there is one classification missing from the list in the article, one published by Freedom House, which puts Italy 73rd place for freedom of the press. The real problem in our country is that information is firmly in the grip of one individual, namely our prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi – which must be one of the worst cases of conflict of interest ever recorded in any country in the western world.
Berlusconi’s control over the media is exercised via his ownership of the largest Italian publishing house, Mondadori, as well as via the country’s six television networks: three private Mediaset channels owned by Berlusconi himself and three channels of the public broadcaster RAI which Berlusconi indirectly controls and influences, with very rare exceptions I might add, through managerial staff appointments.
His virtually total control of the media allows him to maintain a dominant position and provides an endless source of revenue that helps to consolidate his position within the institutions via a wide-ranging system of patronage. In the past, these revenues were made possible by the tacit approval of previous governments that refused to address the issue of obvious conflicts of interest. Currently Berlusconi pays the Italian government a mere 1% of turnover in return for the television broadcasting frequencies conceded to him and now used for Mediaset transmissions. Since the centre-right coalition government came to power, a number of major parastatal companies have diverted their advertising expenditure from the RAI public television networks to the private networks belonging to the prime minister.
In addition to the media issue, there is now also another, namely the scourge of the “unconstitutional” government reforms. The first of these was a law known as the Alfano bill, which was ordered by Silvio Berlusconi himself as his first act after coming to power, which prohibits the prosecution of himself and the incumbents in three other senior government posts.
The provisions of this law mean Berlusconi did not have to appear in a trial in which he was facing charges of bribing a witness. David Mills, his lawyer and former husband of Blair government minister Tessa Jowell, has been sentenced to four years and six months imprisonment for accepting a bribe. On 6 October, the constitutional court is due to issue a ruling regarding the constitutionality of the Alfano bill and, should the court rule that it is indeed unconstitutional, then Berlusconi will be obliged to stand trial for allegedly bribing Mills.
I would like to conclude by appealing to the Guardian and the other foreign press not to allow the spotlight to move away from Italy and to continue to perform the same vitally important task that they have always performed in the past, namely the task of informing the public, a role that most of our media have abdicated from because they are no longer being allowed to do their job.