Page 130 - Comparing Media Systems THREE MODELS OF MEDIA AND POLITICS

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The Three Models

membership is just a matter of tradition” (as well as providing some
material benefits); 4 percent belong to trade unions (Canel and Piqu´ e
1998: 306; on France, McMane 1998). Italy, Greece, and Portugal do
have journalists’ unions that cut across political lines and in the Italian
case it has become quite a significant force, with influence on media pol-
icy and, as we shall see, a role in the very recent move to establish a code
of ethics. In this sense Italy is closer than some of the other Polarized
Pluralist countries to the Democratic Corporatist Model.
The Polarized Pluralist countries also have significant forms of state
recognition of the profession of journalism, though these can be con-
sidered more a manifestation of the closeness of journalism to the state
than its development as an autonomous profession. Italy is the strongest
case here. In 1963 an Order of Journalists was established by law, giving
journalists a legal status similar to that of lawyers, doctors, engineers,
and other professionals. All journalists must belong to it to practice the
profession. But if it plays an important role in controlling access, it has
not played an equivalent role in advancing common standards of pro-
fessional conduct. France also has formal organization in the form of
the Comission de la Carte, which issues credentials to journalists, but its
functions are mainly limited to regulating access to benefits provided
journalists by the state – discussed in the following text – and enforcing
minimum wage regulations. Portugal has a commission similar to that
of France. Regulation of access to the profession has been discussed in
Spain, in part because intense competition for jobs often leaves many
media industry workers in a precarious and marginal employment sit-
uation (Fern´ andez 1997; the increase in temporary and part-time em-
ployment of journalists has also occurred in other countries). Employers
have fiercely opposed such control, however.
Formal education in journalism developed relatively late in all the
Mediterranean countries. Bechelloni (1995) argues that because one
typically entered journalism through a friendship or family relationship,
journalism education did not develop in Italy until the 1980s.
Formal accountability systems are essentially absent in the Mediter-
ranean countries. None has a Press Council at the national level; the only
real press council in Southern Europe is the Consell de la Infomaci´ ode
Catalunya,establishedasaself-regulatorybody,modeledaftertheBritish
Press Complaints Commission, in 1996. The absence of such institutions
reflects the general lack of consensus on ethical standards in the media
of Southern Europe to which Padioleau referred (also Rieffel 1984: 26).
Attempts to establish codes of ethics have certainly taken place. In France

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