Page 159 - Communication and Citizenship Journalism and the Public Sphere

148 COMMUNICATION AND CITIZENSHIP

the constants of the relationship between the media and the political
system; it has changed the degree of state control over mass
communications, thus determining space for different journalistic
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functions. So too, the birth of some independent newspapers and the
resulting growth in this field of commercial competition has changed
press information in that journalists are beginning to raise issues and set
agendas and are assuming a role of intermediation no longer limited
only to the negotial use of political communication but performed
between the political system and the citizens.
But, as stated at the beginning, these are ‘weak’ signals which only
partially change the picture of persistencies in the functioning of the
public sphere. The recent Italian evolution demonstrates that it is not
enough to omit one of the ‘constants of relationship’ between the media
system and the party system (I refer to the end of the public television
broadcasting monopoly, since it has only partially involved television
news services) for there to be substantial change, if the other
dimensions of the relationship between media and political institutions
remain unchanged. For example, the degree of mass-media partisanship
has not changed nor has the degree of media-political elite integration.
But most important there is not yet empirical evidence concerning the
possibility of different structures and functions in the public sphere in
relation to a political system whose constants seem to determine and limit
the field of possible variations. There is not, that is, any empirical
evidence concerning the fact that even though the constants of
relationship are completely revolutionized, no different public sphere
and no different political communication are created in which the
journalist absorbs those functions, indispensable for correct democratic
development of an intermediate dialectical body confronting the
political system. Lacking this, the entire political system appears
‘blocked’, making turnovers in government leadership more difficult
and excluding any expressions capable of applying influence,
independent of party expectations.
On the contrary, for the moment, the fall of the public broadcasting
monopoly and the consolidating of competition between newspapers
have only further complicated the public sphere. Some papers (La
Repubblica, II Giornale, etc.) have in fact overlapped their independent
political issue-raising with the traditional, still in effect negotial use of
political communication, thereby becoming active in perpetuating it.
I think that the subject developed up to this point demonstrates the
complex nature of the problems between the media system and the
political system which excludes the possibility of a single reading,