Page 129 - Comparing Media Systems THREE MODELS OF MEDIA AND POLITICS

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The Mediterranean or Polarized Pluralist Model

author of The Italians) also worked. In France, writing books has always
been important to the prestige of journalistic stars (Rieffel 1984). It also
does not mean that journalists in the Mediterranean countries are not
as good at what they do as those in other regions. How one judges pro-
fessionalization from a normative point of view is a complex issue, and
we will explore it from different angles in various parts of this book.
But one could certainly make an argument that the quality of the writ-
ing and the sophistication of political analysis are higher in papers such
ı
as Le Monde, El Pa´s, La Vanguardia, and La Repubblica than in American
newspapers – not to mention British tabloids. Again it is important to
remember that Mediterranean newspapers have smaller and more so-
phisticated readerships.
Padioleau(1985:310–11),inacomparativestudyofLeMondeandThe
Washington Post at the beginning of the 1980s, pointed to the following
characteristics of French journalism, in making the argument that the
level of professionalization was lower there than in other systems:

...weak [ch´etives] professional organizations except in the form of
competing trade unions; limited social recognition of the Press as a
collective,autonomousandlegitimatesocialactor;alimitedsystem
of common professional ethics; limited agreement on journalistic
standards; weak prestige of training institutions, etc.
He adds that journalists at Le Monde had a strong sense of commitment
to the social role of their own paper, but it was not a commitment they
shared with journalists at other news organizations – in this sense they
were part of an institution but not exactly of a profession.
Certain things have changed, of course, since Padioleau studied Le
Monde in the early 1980s. The rise of Lib´eration as a professional com-
petitor, the increasing importance of the regional papers, and above all
the increasing centrality of electronic media to the journalistic “field”
have made Le Monde less unique, and the prestige of the media as a so-
cial actor has surely increased. Nevertheless, the characteristics noted
by Padioleau apply to a significant degree across the Mediterranean
region.
Professional organizations and journalists’ unions are generally weak,
at least in comparison with the strong organizations of the Democratic
Corporatist countries. In France and Spain where trade unions are af-
filiated with political parties, union membership among journalists is
limited. In Spain about 60 percent of journalists belong to a professional
association left over from the days of fascist corporatism, but “nowadays

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