Page 134 - Comparing Media Systems THREE MODELS OF MEDIA AND POLITICS

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The Three Models

have accepted limited professional autonomy within a hierarchy ulti-
mately based on property rights. In Polarized Pluralist systems – where,
in general, property rights have been subject to more radical challenges –
journalists have at times aspired to more radical forms of autonomy.
The most important case is France after the Liberation when, as we
have seen, the political left briefly advanced a vision of a public service
press system outside the control of private capital. The strongly politi-
cized press of the immediate post-Liberation period was quickly eclipsed
and industrialists regained control of most newspapers. But important
echoes of this era sounded through the subsequent history of the French
media. Le Figaro was licensed to resume publication after the war under
the direction of journalist Pierre Brisson. A dispute eventually arose be-
tween Brisson and the prewar owner of the paper over its editorial line,
which was resolved by splitting the organization into two companies,
one managing the business affairs of the paper and one the journalis-
tic content. Brisson actually headed both; in general in the 1950s and
1960s the directors of French papers (equivalent to an American editor-
in-chief) enjoyed considerable autonomy in relation to owners (Frieberg
1981). Conflicts over control of Le Figaro reemerged in the wake of the
political turmoil of 1968 and eventually the paper was bought by Robert
Hersant, who canceled the agreement separating the two sides of the
organization. Many journalists went on strike and eventually exercised
their right to leave the paper with compensation under the clause de
conscience, which gives French journalists the right to such compensa-
tion when the ideological line of their paper is changed by management.
Conscience clauses are distinctive to Polarized Pluralist systems where
conflict over the political line of news media is relatively sharp. Italy
and Spain also have such laws (as does Israel), which do not exist in the
Liberal or Democratic Corporatist countries, at least in the form they
9
take in the Polarized Pluralist system. Hersant had the following to say
on the journalistic autonomy:

Forme,pluralismdoesnotmeanadiversityofpoliticalviewswithin
a particular newspaper. If a journalist joins L’Humanit´ it is to
e
produce a newspaper that tallies with the wishes of the Communist
Party. The press, by its very nature, has to make policy choices and

9
Countries fitting the Democratic Corporatist Model sometimes have a sort of con-
science clause that gives journalists the right to refuse particular assignments that
would violate their principles.

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