Page 185 - Comparing Media Systems THREE MODELS OF MEDIA AND POLITICS

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The North/Central European Model

an absolute ruler, has thus been replaced by the concept of the
all-embracing democratic state, the social and legal state [sozialer
Rechtsstaat], which gains its legitimacy through political repre-
sentation of its citizens in parliament. This strong reliance upon
politicalpartiesnaturallymeansthatfactionalpoliticspermeateev-
ery aspect of West German life, including its broadcasting system.
The Constitutional Court regarded not only political parties, but
also other associations of interests, as “intermediary forces” which
precede parliamentary decision-making and are necessary for the
democratic formation of public will. Therefore, non-partisan in-
terests have also been hierarchised in order to carry out a number
of state regulatory duties, such as the allocation of public funds
to charities, collective bargaining and public insurance. Last but
not least, they have a mandate to participate in the regulation of
broadcasting.

This pattern, which Kelly (1983) called a “politics in broadcasting sys-
tem,” is most strongly manifested in Germany, Austria, and in a differ-
ent way in Belgium, while the Nordic countries could probably be said
to tend more in the direction of the professional model discussed in
Chapter 2.
The German system is complex, in part because Germany is a federal
system, and broadcasting falls under the authority of the L¨ ander govern-
ments, and is organized a bit differently in each of the L¨ ander. The federal
structure of German broadcasting, which grew out of the reorganization
of the German media system by the Western Allies immediately after the
defeat of the Nazi regime, was intended as part of a series of guarantees
of pluralism, as a barrier to the monopolization of political power by any
single force. In a sense it introduces a degree of external pluralism into
the German system, as the different L¨ ander are governed by different
political majorities, and these political differences are reflectedtoade-
gree in the different public broadcasting organizations. This also carries
over into private broadcasting: RTL, owned by Bertelsmann and licensed
in Nord-Rhein-Westphalia, which is governed by the Social Democrats
and Greens, is commonly regarded as a bit to the left of the other main
commercial broadcaster Sat 1, which is licensed in conservative Bavaria
(Patterson and Donsbach 1993; see Figure 6.1).
PublicbroadcastingorganizationsbasedineachoftheL¨ anderaregov-
erned by boards that are independent of the state and that typically in-
clude representatives both of political parties, appointed by proportional

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