Page 198 - Comparing Media Systems THREE MODELS OF MEDIA AND POLITICS

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The Three Models

had weakened the effect of affiliation on content. They also report figures
on the percent of the population reading a paper that corresponded with
their own political affiliation – which declined from 1979 through 1997
among Conservatives and Social Democrats (in the latter case most sub-
stantially, from 32 to 15 percent) – as liberal papers increasingly became
dominant.Schoenbach,Stuerzebecher,andSchneider(1998:225)report
that between 1980–2 and 1992 survey data on journalists showed that
“‘expressive’ elements of the profession – to be able to pass on one’sown
opinion to other people and to have a political impact – retreated in fa-
vor of intrinsic rewards, which manifested themselves more in everyday
work routines. . . . Also, a service orientation increased. More journalists
were ready to offer something to the audience, and fewer wanted to stir it
up, train it or educate it.” What their data show, above all, is an increase
in the proportion of journalists saying that it is their role to entertain
the public or to “mirror what the public thinks”– a finding consistent
with Djerf-Pierre’s (2000) analysis of the content of Swedish TV news,
which showed an increasingly “conformist” attitude toward the news
audience.
As significant as these trends are, however, an important degree of
political parallelism does persist in the Democratic Corporatist coun-
tries. Pfetsch (2001: 64) observes that the relationship between politi-
cians and journalists is marked by “a more media-oriented style of in-
teraction in the United States, a more politically motivated interaction
style in Germany.” Her analysis suggests some similarity to the pat-
tern noted in the Italian case in Chapter 5, in which journalists are
involved in the process of bargaining among political forces and to a
significant extent participate in and play by the rules of that political
process. In the German case, there has been something of a polemic
about the degree of politicization of journalists. Some scholars, for ex-
ample,K¨ ocher(1986),Donsbach(1995),andDonsbachandKlett(1993)
have argued that German journalists tend to have, in K¨ ocher’s words, a
“missionary” orientation, a concern with expressing ideas and shaping
opinions. Donsbach’s data show German, along with Italian journal-
ists, more likely to say that “championing particular values and ideas”
as important to their work as a journalist (71 percent and 74 percent
respectively) compared with British (45 percent), Swedish (36 percent),
and United States (21 percent) journalists, and also more likely to say
that advocacy is typical of their work. His data also show that German
journalists are more likely to combine the roles of reporter or editor
and of commentator, which was less common among Italian and British

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