Page 108 - Comparing Media Systems THREE MODELS OF MEDIA AND POLITICS

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The Three Models

political conflicts that mark the history of this region, and there is a
strongtraditionofregardingthemasmeansofideologicalexpressionand
political mobilization. At the same time, the development of commercial
media markets was relatively weak, leaving the media often dependent
on the state, political parties, the Church, or wealthy private patrons,
and inhibiting professionalization and the development of the media
as autonomous institutions. These patterns are changing: the forces of
globalization, commercialization, and secularization that, as we shall see
in greater detail in Chapter 8, are transforming the media across Europe
arestronglyatworkintheMediterraneanregion.Nevertheless,themedia
intheMediterraneancountriesremaindistinctiveinimportantwaysthat
are connected with this history.
In its media system, as in its political history and social structure,
France is clearly a borderline case; in terms of our three models it can
be seen as falling somewhere between the Polarized Pluralist and Demo-
cratic Corporatist models. We have made the decision to include France
with the Mediterranean countries for two reasons. First, we believe that
the tendency for the media to be dominated by the political sphere that
is characteristic of the Polarized Pluralist systems is strong enough in
French media history that France fits this model more closely than any
other. Second, there is a strong and direct historical connection between
the French media and those of other Southern European countries. It
was the Napoleonic invasion that brought the modern newspaper to Italy
and the Iberian peninsula, and French journalism was in many ways the
paradigm case on which the journalism of the region was based.

THE POLITICAL AND LITERARY ROOTS OF JOURNALISM
ThemediadevelopedinSouthernEuropeasaninstitutionofthepolitical
and literary worlds more than of the market. In Northern Europe and
North America, the commercial bourgeoisie, whose success in a market
economy depended on a steady flow of reliable information about trade,
navigation,technology,andpolitics,playedakeyroleinthedevelopment
of the first newspapers. A mass circulation press then began to develop
as increasing numbers of the middle, working, and agrarian classes –
including both males and females – entered the market and – through
the development of mass political parties – the political process.
Certain elements of this process did, of course, take place in the
Mediterranean countries, especially in France and in northern Italy.
Venice, in fact, was the most important center of the European printing

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