Page 119 - Comparing Media Systems THREE MODELS OF MEDIA AND POLITICS

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The Mediterranean or Polarized Pluralist Model

Commentary-oriented journalism was the rule. To quote Forcella (1959)
once again:

When I first started doing journalism, I thought journalism was be-
fore all else information, facts, news. ... But I sadly learned, slowly,
too slowly, that I was greatly deceived. Facts for a political journalist
never speak by themselves. They either say too much or too little.
When they say too much you have to make them speak more softly,
when they say too little you have to integrate them to give them
their proper meaning. Clarity in this work is a cumbersome virtue
(454).

The dominant form of political reporting through the fifties and six-
ties was a kind of article known as the pastone, written by the most
prestigious journalists and appearing on the front page (Dardano 1976),
which combined a review of the major political developments of the
day with comments by the journalist (a form similar in many ways to
what the French call the chronique and the Spanish call the cr´onica). Even
as more market-oriented papers emerged, beginning in the 1970s, they
did not abandon political identities or commentary-oriented journal-
ism (Mancini 2000a; Roidi 2001). La Repubblica was the pioneer in the
shift toward a more market-oriented newspaper industry in Italy. It in-
troduced more colorful writing and graphic presentation; broadened its
agenda to include more entertainment and culture and eventually sports
and crime; hired women reporters; and increased female readership. Yet
it is clearly a paper of the left and a prime example of a paper that offers
“orientation rather than just news facts,” in the words of its founder,
Eugenio Scalfari (quoted in Poggioli 1991: 6). In the first issue of La
Repubblica (January 14, 1976, p. 6), Scalfari wrote:

This newspaper is a bit different from others: it is a journal of
information that doesn’t pretend to follow an illusory political
neutrality, but declares explicitly that it has taken a side in the
political battle. It is made by men who belong to the vast arc of the
Italian left.
In the 1990s two other Italian papers, L’Indipendente and Il Giornale,
moved toward a still higher level of sensationalism in the search for read-
ers, characterized by screaming headlines of a sort previously unknown.
Both are also highly political – L’ Indipendente, close to the right-wing
Northern League and Il Giornale, the voice of Berlusconi’s Forza Italia.
The history of L’Indipendente is very illustrative of Italian journalistic

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