Page 139 - Comparing Media Systems THREE MODELS OF MEDIA AND POLITICS

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The Mediterranean or Polarized Pluralist Model

outside French borders that played an important role in the French radio
market during the public service “monopoly.” The Spanish government
owned 25 percent of each of the major radio networks until the early
1990s, and the Portuguese government (like the French government im-
mediately after the liberation) owned most newspapers in the first years
after the transition to democracy (the Spanish government also initially
inheritedFranco’sPrensadelMovimiento).InItalyparastatalenterprises
have often owned or had investments in print media. Both Il Giorno and
Il Messaggero have been owned by such entities, which of course are also
important advertisers. SIPRA, RAI’s advertising sales unit, handles sales
for many commercial newspapers (Castronovo and Tranfaglia 1994).
Italy and France have the highest levels of state subsidies to the press
in Europe (Humphries 1996: 105–6). Direct subsidies have gone pri-
marily toward economically marginal papers considered important to
maintaining political diversity – party and ideological papers – though
in Italy during the 1980s all newspapers received them. Extensive indirect
subsidies have been provided to the press as a whole in the form of tax
breaks, reduced utility rates, and the like. Total subsidies have been esti-
mated to amount to about 12 to 15 percent of the revenue of the press.
There are also subsidies to journalists as individuals; French journalists
get a 30 percent tax reduction and such benefits as free admission to na-
tional museums. Italian journalists get cheap train tickets and, through
the Ordine di Giornalisti, better pension and health benefits than most
Italian workers.
Other countries have less extensive subsidy systems, though these
have been significant in some periods. Portugal has reduced postal rates
for newspapers, reduced rates for journalists’ transportation, and subsi-
dies for training and technological modernization. Spain had substantial
press subsidies for a while in the 1980s, but does not currently. However,
government advertising is an important form of subsidy, particularly
for smaller local newspapers, many of which would not exist without it.
Unlike formal press subsidies in France, Italy, or the Democratic Cor-
poratist countries, government advertising is fairly often used in Spain
as a form of political pressure. In Greece state subsidies to the press are
not governed by a clear legal framework, consistent with the clientelist
nature of Greek politics that will be discussed in the following text. They
take the form of “soft” loans, subsidies both overt and covert, and state
jobs offered to many journalists (Dimitras 1997: 102–3).
Like the other European countries, and, as we shall see in Chapter 7,
in contrast to the relatively pure liberal system in the United States, the

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