Page 111 - Comparing Media Systems THREE MODELS OF MEDIA AND POLITICS

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The Mediterranean or Polarized Pluralist Model

theNazierafurtherdamageditsdevelopmentanditonlypartlyrecovered
after World War II.
The French experience had a very direct impact on the rest of the
Mediterranean region, and the pattern of media development is essen-
tially similar, though the commercial press was weaker than in France.
In Italy and the Iberian peninsula, the press began to grow in the wake of
the Napoleonic invasion, and newspapers served primarily to fight out
the battles between tradition and modernity that extended over most
of the following century and a half. In Spain and Italy a vigorous opinion
press emerged in the nineteenth century and the press played a key role
in the institution of a liberal state during the Italian Risorgimento and
the Canovite Restoration in Spain (Ortiz 1995). In both cases important
political leaders – C´ anovas and Canalejas in Spain; Cavour and Mazzini
in Italy – were journalists as well as politicians: newspapers were essential
tools for the organization of the movements they led. Commercial press
markets also developed to a limited extent in the period from about
1880–1920, and newspapers experimented with information-oriented
journalismofthesortthathaddevelopedintheUnitedStatesandBritain.
But the economic and social base of the press always remained narrow.
The development of the market economy was limited, compared with
the Liberal or Democratic Corporatist countries. Literacy rates were low
exceptinFrance(Cipolla1969),wherethestateplayedastrongroleinthe
expansion of education (Weber 1976). In Spain over 70 percent of the
population was illiterate in 1887, and this was true of about a third of
the population in 1940 (Ortiz 1995: 216). Italy had not only a relatively
high illiteracy rate – a bit less than 60 percent at the time of unification
in 1870 – but also substantial linguistic diversity. Only 2 to 3 percent of
the population could understand the Tuscan dialect established as the
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official language at unification (Vincent 2000: 139). It was television
that eventually brought linguistic standardization to Italy (De Mauro
1979). By the 1920s–30s, the development of the press was disrupted by
dictatorship, for many decades in the Spanish and Portuguese cases.
The first Greek newspapers were exile papers published under Turkish
occupation, which lasted until the 1830s. Greek history is marked by
sharp political conflict and frequent alternation between dictatorship –
or occupation – and democracy. Greek newspapers have for the most
part developed as political papers with limited readership. Until the

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Illiteracy diminished in all of the Southern European countries following World War II
and today is not much different from the rest of Europe.

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