Page 115 - Comparing Media Systems THREE MODELS OF MEDIA AND POLITICS

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The Mediterranean or Polarized Pluralist Model

except France, as compared with 59 percent in Britain, 28 percent
in Sweden, or 10 percent in the Netherlands (World Association of
Newspapers 2001).
Tabloid or sensationalist popular newspapers are virtually absent in
the Mediterranean region except for France Soir, which has declined
2
substantially in circulation since the 1980s. Attempts to establish sen-
sationalist papers in Spain, one involving the German publisher Axel
Springer and another involving the Daily Mirror, have failed on a num-
ber of occasions (Barerra 1995: 137–9). The role of the popular press is
in part filled in Southern Europe by sports dailies, which are important
in every country, and in some cases by what the Spanish call the prensa
del coraz´on, weekly publications with predominantly female audiences
3
focusing on celebrities and human-interest stories. Sports dailies had
combined circulations at the time this book went to press of more than
800,000 in Italy, 650,000 in Spain, and 200,000 in Portugal (as against
280,000forthefourmaingeneral-interestpapers).Itshouldbenotedthat
the figures for circulation per thousand reported in Chapter 2 include the
sports press, and thus could be said to overstate newspaper circulation in
Southern Europe. The local press is also relatively undeveloped, except in
France, where it accounts for about 70 percent of newspaper circulation;
itsreadershipislesseliteandlessmaleincharacterthanthenationalpress.
The largest selling paper in France is a provincial daily, Ouest France,at
about 700,000.
Mass circulation newspapers never developed in Southern Europe in
part because the economic and political conditions for the development
of media markets were not present until the mid–twentieth century –
when radio had already become an important medium and television
was beginning to emerge. It seems unlikely that any country that did
not develop mass circulation newspapers in the late nineteenth century
ever will have them. The only true mass media of Southern Europe are
electronic media, and their importance for the formation of mass public
opinion is therefore particularly great.

2 Le Parisien was also once a sensationalist paper, though it has since repositioned itself
as a respectable regional paper for the Paris area. Neither Le Parisien nor France Soir
was ever as sensationalist as British tabloids.
3 The most significant is ¡Hola!, which goes back to the 1930s. Felipe Gonz´ ales gave his
first interview as president to ¡Hola! (Barrera 1995: 177). The company also publishes
Hello! in Britain. ¡Hola! is less sensationalist than British tabloids. In one case it bought
nude pictures of Lady Di so that other publications couldn’t get them and did not
publish them.

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