Page 184 - Comparing Media Systems THREE MODELS OF MEDIA AND POLITICS

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The Three Models

with commercialization, as we shall see in detail in Chapter 8 (Brants and
McQuail 1997). In 1976 – as pillarization in Dutch society continued to
weaken – new legislation allowed the creation of more neutral/liberal
broadcast organizations, TROS and Veronica (the latter a commercially
oriented organization that originally started as a pirate station), as well as
EO, linked to the Evangelical church (Nieuwenhuis 1992). The separate
broadcasting organizations that originated in pillarization do still exist,
though the differences among them are dramatically less significant than
they were a generation earlier.
The Dutch system has been based on a form of “external pluralism”
(Hoffman Riem 1996), with separate broadcasting companies represent-
ing different social groups. In other Democratic Corporatist countries
internal pluralism in broadcasting is preferred: An attempt is made to
represent the different organized voices of the society within a single
organization (or, in the case of linguistically plural societies such as
Switzerland and Belgium, within systems organized by language). Inter-
nal pluralism, in the sense Hoffmann-Riem employs here, involves both
the content of broadcasting – which is required to reflect the diversity
of perspectives within society – and the structure of broadcast organi-
zations, which often incorporate representatives of the different social,
political, and cultural groups. In this latter characteristic, the broadcast-
ing systems of the Democratic Corporatist countries differ from those of
the Liberal countries. The “professional model” exemplified by the BBC
is based on the separation of broadcasting both from the government
and from parties and other organized social forces. Pluralism is, in the-
ory, achieved by keeping politics out of the governance of broadcasting,
leaving it to neutral broadcasting professionals to represent the diversity
of society. The Democratic Corporatist countries, in contrast, tend to-
ward a model in which pluralism is guaranteed by making sure that a
diversity of political and social forces is included in the governance of
broadcasting. As Porter and Hasselbach (1991: 5–6) say of the German
system:

This interpretation of pluralism modifies the liberal model, widely
accepted in Anglo Saxon thinking, in several respects. In the
Federal Republic, the political parties are permanent institutions
of public life and are constitutionally assigned the strongest plu-
ralist role. . . . [They] are seen as the political voice of a majority
of citizens cutting across particular interests. The classic idea of
liberalism, that of social groups defending civil liberties against

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