Page 180 - Comparing Media Systems THREE MODELS OF MEDIA AND POLITICS

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The Three Models

newspapers that were the second or third papers in their respective
markets:itthreatenedpluralitybothinthesensethatthesheernumberof
competing newspapers was dropping rapidly and in the sense that the ex-
istence of diverse editorial voices and the function of the press as a forum
for debate among social groups seemed in peril. In Sweden, for example,
Social Democratic and Center (formerly Agrarian) party papers were
particularly threatened, and these parties were the primary supporters
of press subsidies, as the most successful commercial papers were more
likely to be Liberal or Conservative in their politics (Gustafsson 1980;
Cheesman and Kyhn 1991; Østbye 1991).
Some countries have subsidy systems directed indiscriminately at
all newspapers, some have systems targeted at economically weak
newspapers or those with a “special character”– in most cases those
that represent political parties or other kinds of social groups (including,
for example, newspapers that serve the Sami population in Norway) –
and many have a combination of these systems (Humphreys 1996: 105;
Murschetz 1998). Subsidies usually represent a small proportion of the
turnover of large commercial papers, but can be quite significant for
economically weaker ones. Hadenius and Weibull (1999) estimate that
in Sweden they represent between 5 and 35 percent of revenue for second
papers in metropolitan areas.
Subsidy systems have not been able to reverse the powerful trends
in newspaper markets that motivated them, either the trend toward
concentration or the trend toward displacement of politically distinct
by “omnibus” newspapers. There is evidence, however, that they have
slowed that trend in many of the Democratic Corporatist countries, and
preserved in a limited way some of the pluralism of an earlier era. In
Norway, for example, the number of local markets with more than one
paperdeclinedfrom20to10between1972and1999,thoughHøst(1999)
estimates that without subsidies all ten remaining second papers would
die.Healsoarguesthatthesubsidysystemhasbeenresponsibleforanex-
pansionoflocalweeklynewspapers,oftenwithdistinctpoliticalpointsof
view, which have to some extent replaced the politically oriented dailies
of an earlier era. Subsidy systems may also have contributed modestly to
the continuing high circulation of newspapers in Northern Europe. Høst
estimates that in 1997 the newspaper circulation in Norway would have
been514perthousandwithoutsubsidies,incontrasttotheactual589per
thousand. The debate over subsidy systems always included the issue of
whether subsidies would make newspapers subject to pressure from the
state and less willing to play a “watchdog” role, but there does not seem

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