Page 135 - Comparing Media Systems THREE MODELS OF MEDIA AND POLITICS

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The Mediterranean or Polarized Pluralist Model

journalists must choose to work for newspapers that accord with
their political views (Tunstall and Palmer 1991: 145).

Journalists in French public television also went on strike following the
1968rebellion,protestingrestrictionsonthereportingofpoliticalevents;
many were fired following the strike.
Only at Le Monde and Lib´eration (the latter founded as a cooperative
radical paper following the 1968 uprising) did a form of the journal-
ists’ control envisaged in post-Liberation France survive. Control of Le
Monde was eventually placed in the hands of the Soci´ et´ e des R´ edacteurs,
the Journalists’ Corporation, which had the right to elect the director,
and was backed financially by a Corporation of Readers and by a group
of “moral guarantors” who held nonvoting shares. The journalists’ own-
ership of the company has eroded significantly over time, but they do
retain the right to elect the director, and in this sense Le Monde remains
a highly unusual example of journalistic autonomy. Le Monde has also
until recently followed a policy of limiting the percent of revenue derived
from advertising, which was seen as protecting the newspaper from out-
side influence. At Lib´eration the nonhierarchical culture of its early years
as a radical alternative paper was institutionalized in a Soci´ et´ e Civil des
Personels similar to that of Le Monde. In 1996 most of the shares of
the paper were sold to a commercial company, Chargeurs, S.A., with
the employees retaining 20 percent ownership and the right to veto the
appointment of a new director.
In Portugal following the revolution journalists also challenged own-
ership control of the media, taking over most of them for a while – not
in the name of professional autonomy, in this case, but as instruments of
class struggle. The radical phase of the Portuguese revolution ended in
part because of a public reaction against the journalists’ takeover of the
¸
Catholic radio station Radio Renacensa. In Italy, as well, activist jour-
nalists sometimes challenged ownership prerogatives during the 1970s.
The cover of Il Messaggero urging a No vote on the divorce referendum
was printed in defiance of the owner. In both Italy and Portugal, owners
eventually reasserted control. But a legacy of this period exists in the
form of editorial councils that give journalists the right to be consulted
on certain decisions, usually including the appointment of the director.
ı
El Pa´s, also founded in the 1970s in a period of social activism, has such
a council as well.
In general, however, the level of journalistic autonomy is lower in the
Mediterranean countries compared with both Democratic Corporatist

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