Rodolfo De Benedetti doesn’t want to comment about Silvio Berlusconi. Mr De Benedetti, chief executive of the family-controlled conglomerate CIR, owns La Repubblica, one of the fiercest newspaper critics of the Italian prime minister. But in spite of an escalating war of words – and lawsuits – between the two sides after the newspaper exposed the prime minister’s still unexplained relationship with an 18-year-old, Mr De Benedetti sees the dispute as an editorial matter.