Page 128 - Comparing Media Systems THREE MODELS OF MEDIA AND POLITICS

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The Three Models

PROFESSIONALIZATION
Journalism, as we have seen, originated in the Mediterranean countries
as an extension of the worlds of literature and politics. The corps of
journalists was an “unformed aggregate of authors and editors” and
journalism a “route of passage, not a place of arrival” (Ferenczi 1993: 29,
41; Chalaby 1996). Newspapers typically “valued more highly writers,
politicians and intellectuals,” and journalism was “a secondary occupa-
tion, poorly paid and to which one aspired often as a springboard to a
career in politics” (Ortega and Humanes 2000: 125) or in literature. In
Spain it was commonly said that there were only two routes to a career in
politics – through the military or through journalism (Ortiz 1995). This
began to change with the development of the commercial press and the
“new journalism” in the last two decades of the nineteenth century. The
number of people making a full-time, permanent living from journalism
increased dramatically. New genres of writing were being developed that
could be considered distinctively journalistic and a sense of a distinct
professional identity clearly began to emerge.
In many ways, this history of journalistic professionalization is closely
parallel to what occurred in the Liberal and Democratic Corporatist
countries. The process did not develop as strongly in the Mediterranean
countries, however, as in the North. The political and literary roots of
journalism were deeper, and the political connections persisted much
longer. Limited development of media markets meant that newspapers
were smaller and less likely to be self-sustaining. And state intervention,
particularly in periods of dictatorship, interrupted the development of
journalism as a profession. The level of professionalization thus remains
lower in the Mediterranean countries, though it increased in important
ways in the last couple of decades of the twentieth century.
It is important to make clear what we mean when we say the level
of professionalization is lower. This does not, for example, mean that
journalists in the Mediterranean countries are less educated than those
elsewhere. Spanish journalists are more likely to have university degrees
today than those in Britain or Germany (Weaver 1998). The close con-
nection of journalism with the political and literary worlds and the ori-
entation of newspapers to educated elites has meant that journalism has
in some sense been a more elite occupation in Southern Europe than in
other regions. In Italy famous writers and intellectuals have often been
journalists as well: the film director and writer Pasolini was a commen-
tator for Il Corriere della Sera, for example, where the writer Barzini (the

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