Page 191 - Comparing Media Systems THREE MODELS OF MEDIA AND POLITICS

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The North/Central European Model

reporting of the investigation of the 1986 assassination of Swedish Prime
Minister Olof Palme is an excellent illustration of the strength of self-
regulation in the Swedish media: over two years of investigation, the
suspect was never named in the Swedish press, something impossible to
imagine in Britain, for example, or in Italy. The Norwegian Press Council
goes back to 1936 and also includes representatives of the public (as does
the Dutch) and provides assistance to members of the public wishing to
file complaints, though it has no legal sanctions. Heinonen (1998: 181)
notes that decisions of the Finnish Press Council are published in the
journalists’ union magazine, and that 40 percent of journalists report
reading them carefully and 96 percent at least occasionally. The German
Press Council has only journalists’ and publishers’ representatives, and
inthatsenseisprobablysomewhatweaker, as is theAustrian, whose deci-
sions are often ignored by the dominant tabloid the Neue Kronenzeitung
(Humphreys 1996: 61–2).
Press councils in the Democratic Corporatist countries were estab-
lished either by journalists or by publishers’ organizations or by the two
jointly, rather than established by the state, though in some cases concern
about state regulation was an important motivating factor. Their opera-
tion is based on codes of ethics that, again, have been adopted by journal-
istsorpublishers’organizations(Laitila1995),andthatusuallyhavehigh
levels of acceptance among journalists and publishers (e.g., Heinonen
1998: 180). Only Denmark deviates somewhat from this pattern: its press
council was established by a 1992 Media Liability Act, which also incor-
porated into law a code of ethics that had been adopted twenty-five years
earlier by the publishers. The journalists’ union had refused to endorse it,
taking the view that particular journalists and newspapers should make
their own ethical judgments (Kruuse n.d.). The ethical culture of Danish
journalism is not, however, dramatically different from that of other
Scandinavian countries. Following Humphreys and others (Article XIX
1993; Humphreys 1996) press councils in Sweden, the Netherlands, and
Norway are judged to be the most effective.
Formal education in journalism also often serves to promote a distinct
professionalidentity,thoughthishasforthemostpartcomelaterthanthe
development of journalists’ organizations and systems of self-regulation
in the Democratic Corporatist countries. In Finland it started in the
1920s, following the civil war, when a centralized university system was
created and journalism education was established along with education
inotherprofessions.AsinmostoftheDemocraticCorporatistcountries,
however, it remained small-scale until the 1960s. In Sweden the first

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