Page 186 - Comparing Media Systems THREE MODELS OF MEDIA AND POLITICS

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The Three Models

representation, and of “socially relevant groups” including trade unions,
churches,industrialandprofessionalassociations,andavarietyofothers.
Proportional representation penetrates down through the organization,
as considerations of political balance affect the appointments of jour-
nalists and other key personnel. The boards that regulate private broad-
casting are organized along similar lines, and in certain of the L¨ ander
commercial broadcasters have been required to or have voluntarily set up
programming boards with similar representation, though these boards
are only advisory in character. The German system is thus, along with
the very different Dutch one, the classic example of a “civic” broad-
casting system based on representation not just of political parties
but of organized civil society. There are, to be sure, critiques of this
system. One is that the parties dominate it in the end, in part because
the representatives of the “socially relevant groups” oftenhaveparty
alignments. In this sense the German system would collapse into the
“parliamentary” model of broadcast governance. Another critique is that
the German system fails to represent social interests that are not for-
mally organized and not incorporated into the structure of corporatist
representation.
One other characteristic of the German system should be mentioned.
The Federal Constitutional Court plays an extremely important role in
the supervision of broadcasting in Germany. This is probably due both
to the strength of the tradition of rational-legal authority in Germany –
which will be discussed later in this chapter – and to the federal char-
acter of broadcast regulation, which often leaves it to the court to set
central broadcasting policy. The Constitutional Court has played an im-
portant role on a number of occasions in protecting the independence
of the broadcasting when either the federal or L¨ ander governments have
tried to bring it under stronger government control (Humphreys 1994:
161–2).
Austria also has a broadcasting system based strongly on a philosophy
of political representation. Originally it was based on the parliamen-
tary model, with a board of directors appointed by party proportional
representation. In 1967, in an effort to make it more independent, the
board was enlarged to include nine members appointed by the federal
government,sixbyParliamentaccordingtoproportionalrepresentation,
oneeachbyeachL¨ ander government, six by a Council of Viewers and
Listeners, and five by the employees, and the position of the director was
strengthened. As in Germany, however, most directors have party links;
political parties are strong in Austria, and the “Proporz” principle still

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