Page 110 - Comparing Media Systems THREE MODELS OF MEDIA AND POLITICS

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The Three Models

furthest in France, and this is one important way in which France is a
borderline case. Today newspaper circulation is higher in France than
in all the other Mediterranean countries, but lower than in all the rest
of Western Europe. The history of the French press is characterized by
sharp ups and downs both in the achievement of press freedom and in
readership. The revolution and the Declaration of the Rights of Man and
the Citizen ushered in an early period of press freedom. Newspaper cir-
culation soared to a total that might be as high as 300,000 a day, close to
the limit of what could be produced with the technology of the day, and
higher than anywhere in the world. The newspaper public, multiplied
by the location of newspapers in public places such as cafes, reached
substantially beyond the aristocratic and bourgeois readers of earlier
periods, though it still remained restricted by later standards – perhaps
three million out of an adult population of fourteen million (Popkin
1990: 82–6). By 1802, however, the total press run of Paris papers had
fallen back to 33,000.
PressfreedomwasreestablishedinFrancein1881,andtheperiodfrom
1881 until World War I is generally referred to as the Golden Age of the
French Press. Commercial newspapers modeled in part on the American
penny press (Le Matin was run by an American) played an important role
in this period, and put French newspapers again at the top rank in terms
of circulation. By the beginning of World War I Le Petit Parisien, with
distribution across much of France and a circulation over two million,
was the largest-selling newspaper in the world. France had a circulation
rate of 244 newspapers sold per 1,000 inhabitants, about the same as the
United States at 255 per thousand, and higher than Britain at 160 per
thousand (Albert 1983: 24–5). But the commercial press, which claimed
to have no politics, did not displace the press of opinion in the way it
did in the Liberal countries. In 1914 80 percent of Paris papers were still
papers of opinion (Thogmartin 1998: 95), though by circulation these
papers were much less significant. Most important, the mass circulation
press of the French “Golden Age” did not develop into a powerful and
lasting newspaper industry. Though their circulations were large, the
FrenchcommercialpaperswereneverasprofitableastheirU.S.orBritish
counterparts. The advertising market in France remained small, and in
1936 French newspapers were estimated to have about one sixth to one
eighth the advertising revenue of their British or American counterparts
(Thogmartin 1998: 107; Neveu 2001: 11–12). By the 1930s the French
newspaper industry, much of it controlled by a cartel and riddled with
corruption, was in serious decline. Repression and collaboration during

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