Page 131 - Comparing Media Systems THREE MODELS OF MEDIA AND POLITICS

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The Mediterranean or Polarized Pluralist Model

for example, the Syndicat National des Journalistes established one in
1935. But such codes have not become strongly institutionalized in the
culture and practice of journalism. In Italy, serious efforts to codify jour-
nalisticethicsdateessentiallytothe1990s.A1997surveyshowedthatless
than 30 percent of Italian journalists knew the provisions of the major
codes well, and that large numbers of journalists rejected them (Mancini
2000: 123). It is also worth noting that the Mediterranean countries tend
to have relatively weak protection for professional confidentiality of in-
formation collected by journalists (a bit stronger, probably, in France
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and Portugal), reflecting limited recognition of the profession by the
wider society.

JOURNALISTIC AUTONOMY VS. INSTRUMENTALIZATION

Weak consensus on journalistic standards and limited development
of professional self-regulation reflect the fact that journalism in the
Mediterraneanregionhastoasignificantextentnotbeenanautonomous
institution, but has been ruled by external forces, principally from the
worlds of politics and of business. One well-known Italian journalist,
Pansa (1977), used the phrase “giornalista dimezzato”– the journalist
cut in half – by which he meant that the Italian journalist belonged only
half to himself and the other half belonged to powers outside journalism:
media owners, financial backers, and politicians. The rules of the game
of Italian journalism have traditionally been above all political rules: they
have to do with the process of bargaining among political elites, which
journalism for the most part has served. In the last section of this chap-
ter we will consider more systematically the nature of this bargaining
process, the role of the media within it, and the nature of a democratic
systembasedonthisformofpoliticalcommunication.Herewewillfocus
on the conflicts over journalistic autonomy and “instrumentalization” of
the media that have been an important part of media history in Southern
Europe.
One of the most characteristic patterns of the Mediterranean region
is the use of the media by various actors as tools to intervene in the
political world. This takes many forms. Media tied to political parties
and the Church obviously are established in large part to facilitate the
intervention of these institutions. In periods of dictatorship the media

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Errea(1993);RodriguezRuiz(1993);Mendes(1999).Itshouldbenotedthatsystematic
comparative analyses of media law are hard to find. Obviously, legal practices are not
fully described by the texts of the laws.

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