Page 123 - Comparing Media Systems THREE MODELS OF MEDIA AND POLITICS

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The Mediterranean or Polarized Pluralist Model

Table 5.3 Party-Press Parallelism in Spanish Newspaper
Readership, 1993 (percentages down)

Newspaper Read Most Frequently
ı
El Pa´s ABC El Mundo
Voted for PSOE 36% 13% 10%
Voted for PP 14 74 38
Voted for IU 24 3 21
Voted for other party 7 5 2
Did not vote 19 5 29

Source: 1993SpanishCNEPSurveyreportedinGunther,Montero,
and Wert (2000: 46).

COPE,andtheprivatizedstatetelecommunicationscompany,Telef´ onica
de Espa˜ na (headed by a childhood friend of President Jos´ eMar´ ıa Aznar),
which gained control of the private television company Antena 3 and the
radio network Onda Cero, and launched a rival satellite television oper-
ation to compete with PRISA’s Canal Plus (Bustamante 2000). Among
major national media, only the private television channel Tele 5, largely
owned by foreign capital, has remained more or less outside of these
camps. Regional media reflect the often special political alignments of
the autonomous regions – the Barcelona paper La Vanguardia, for ex-
ample, being close to the Catalan Nationalist CiU. 5
With the tradition of the political press interrupted in Spain, the in-
fluence of the American form of professionalism has been fairly great, at
leastasfarasthenewerpapersareconcerned(thetraditionalconservative
paper ABC has been characterized by a much more explicitly ideological
6
style). TheStyleBookofElPa´ıs(1996)saysonitsfirstpage,“information
and opinion shall be clearly differentiated from one another.” Neverthe-
less, even at the newer Spanish papers, advocacy traditions coexist with
the influence of neutral professionalism. Pedro J. Ram´ ırez, director of
El Mundo, for example, wrote in his initial article introducing the paper
thatitwouldbe“un ´ organoradicalenladefensadesusconvicciones”–“a
radicalorganindefenseofitsconvictions”(quotedinBarrera1995:126).

5 Barrera (1995: 106ff) gives a much more detailed discussion of the evolution of its
political orientation during the period of PSOE rule.
6
Gunther, Montero, and Wert (2000: 55) argue that both ABC and El Mundo mix news
and opinion more than El Pa´s.
ı
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