Page 133 - Comparing Media Systems THREE MODELS OF MEDIA AND POLITICS

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The Mediterranean or Polarized Pluralist Model

dominate media ownership, and a long tradition of using media as
a means of pressure on politicians continues. As Papathanassopoulos
(2000) notes, “give me a ministry or I will start a newspaper” is a tra-
ditional political threat in Greece. Newspaper owners are well-known
figures and are often decisive actors in the political world (Dimitras
1997: 101).
In France, there was a move in the immediate post-Liberation era to
prevent industrial control of the press – a reaction to the corruption
and instrumentalization of the interwar period – and establish some
sort of public service system. The French Press Federation said in 1945,
“The press is not a means of commercial profit. It is free only when it
is not dependent on either the government or the money powers, but
only on the conscience of its journalists and readers” (Thogmartin 1998:
144). No such system was established, however, and important elements
of the old pattern reasserted themselves. The most important exam-
ple of control by a politically ambitious private owner has been Robert
Hersant, owner of Le Figaro and France-Soir, among other media prop-
erties. Hersant was a member of both the French parliament (1956–78)
and later the European parliament, and in the 1986–8 National Assem-
bly there were twelve members who worked for some Hersant entity
(Tunstall and Palmer 1991: 145). In Spain, unlike Italy or Greece, me-
dia conglomerates – rather than companies based in other industries –
overwhelmingly dominate media ownership. This is the trend in
Southern Europe, as media markets grow and media properties become
profitable.Hersant’sempireisalsobasedwithinmediaindustries.Never-
theless, as we have seen, the Spanish media owners do have clear political
alliances. In the Spanish case banks also play an important role as in-
vestors. Barrera (1995: 350) writes of their motivations:

It is not only a business deal they seek in the media, especially
when, in many cases, as is true today in commercial TV, these have
barely reached the threshold of profitability. It is their capacity for
influence, in terms of political power and public opinion. ...
An obvious correlate to instrumentalization is the relatively low level
of journalistic autonomy to which Pansa’s phrase giornalista dimezzato
refers. This has not been entirely unchallenged in the Mediterranean
countries. In fact, the issue of control of editorial content has been posed
more explicitly in Mediterranean countries than Northern Europe or
North America. In the latter, journalists have never seriously contested
the right of owners to control commercial media organizations. They

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