Page 125 - Comparing Media Systems THREE MODELS OF MEDIA AND POLITICS

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The Mediterranean or Polarized Pluralist Model

presidents of the Senate and Assembly, a formula based on that used
for the Constitutional Court. A third of the members are replaced every
two years, breaking the association between the appointment of the CSA
and the formation of governments, and appointments have tended to
emphasize expertise above political loyalty. According to the analysis of
Dagnaud (2000: 37–9), new governments still press successfully to name
directors at the public television channels. But the mediating role of the
CSA, which must appoint them, limits considerably the ability of the
government to intervene in the management of those channels.
In Greece, Portugal, and Spain the political majority has effective con-
trol of public broadcasting, though that control is more limited in the
Iberian countries. In Greece, like Gaullist France, control is direct, with
directors of the state broadcasting company ERT under the authority of
the Minister of the Press and the Mass Media. A more broadly represen-
tative National Radio-Television Council, its members nominated by the
partiesinParliamentaccordingtoproportionalrepresentation,hasadvi-
sory authority. Portuguese public television is a corporation whose cap-
ital is held by the state. The government names its directors. However, a
High Authority for Social Communication with greater independence –
modeled to some degree on French institutions – has some oversight
authority and is supposed to approve appointments of news directors.
There is also an advisory Opinion Council on which “socially relevant
groups” are represented, similar to the German system – though only
advisory in character. In Spain, the governing body of the Grupo Radio
Televisi´ on Espa˜ nola (RTVE) is appointed by the parties in Parliament,
and must be approved by a two-thirds majority. Spain is essentially a ma-
joritarian system (see Chapter 3) – the PSOE governed with an absolute
majority and the PP gained an absolute majority after the 2000 election –
so appointment by Parliament according to proportional representation
meansmajoritycontrol,thoughtherequirementofatwo-thirdsmajority
requires serious negotiation with the opposition. The board appointed
following the 2000 election included six representatives of the Partido
Popular (four of them, incidentally, journalists), one each from Catalan
and Canary Islands nationalist parties allied with the majority and four
from the opposition PSOE, with the IU and the Basque Nationalists
excluded from representation. Board members are unambiguously ap-
pointed as party representatives, and both the PSOE and the PP govern-
ments have pursued interventionist policies toward public broadcasting.
Political coverage cannot ignore the variety of Spanish political forces,
but clearly has a slant toward the political interests of the governing

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