Page 172 - Comparing Media Systems THREE MODELS OF MEDIA AND POLITICS

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The Three Models

(1976: 35) put it. “Papers were also necessary both to communication
6
within the parties and to the dialogue between them.” The first to ap-
pear were the liberal papers, beginning with Aftonbladet in 1830. Social
Democratic, Conservative, and Agrarian papers were organized later in
the nineteenth century or near the beginning of the twentieth century.
The socialist papers were often organized on a regional basis and sup-
ported by voluntary contributions of party members (Hadenius 1983).
The fact that the socialist papers were born out of the local party orga-
nizations is a good illustration of the nature of the “local patriotism”
mentioned by Søllinge and no doubt helps to account for the still-high
circulation of the regional press in Sweden.
As late as 1977 two Norwegian researchers would still write, “political
journalism in Scandinavia is firmly anchored in political parties. In
Denmark the share of party dailies represents 92 percent (1968) of
the total press, in Finland 45 percent (1972), in Sweden 97 percent
(1974), and in Norway 87 percent” (1973) (Høyer and Lorentzen 1977).
Denmark’s “four-paper system” is particularly revealing of the “party-
press-parallelism” of mid-twentieth-century Scandinavia: in every
middle-size town each of the four major parties had its own newspa-
per (Cheesman and Kyhn 1991). In Copenhagen other smaller cultural
and political groups established their own “national” papers, sometimes
with supplements for some of the other major cities (Søllinge 1999).
For the Norwegian case Østbye (1991) writes that, even if the links
between parties and newspapers had lost importance since the 1920s and
1930s, most of the newspapers declared their party affiliation openly in
the 1970s. Similarly in Finland, the earlier ethnic-based papers were
followed by the “grand era” of party press from 1905 through the early
1930s, with the Communist press developing in the 1940s. In 1910 only
20 of 117 newspapers had no clear party affiliation and in 1925 only 11
out of 109 (Salokangas 1999).

6 Gustafsson (1980) lists four functions of the press as a social institution outlined by a
Swedish government committee in the 1970s. The importance of functions connected
to organized groups is notable:
To give information to citizens so that they can form views on social questions

To comment on events in society either independently or as a representative for

organized social groups
As a representative of the public to scrutinize the activities exercised by those

holding power in society
To promote communication within and between political groups, trade unions,

and other voluntary groups in society
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