Page 199 - Comparing Media Systems THREE MODELS OF MEDIA AND POLITICS

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The North/Central European Model

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and still less common among Swedish and U.S. journalists. In Belgium,
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too, the roles of reporter and commentator tend to be fused. The con-
trast with Sweden suggests that in this sense Germany (like Belgium)
shades toward the Polarized Pluralist Model, something that would be
consistent with the historical pattern of polarized pluralism in Germany
and with the continuing centrality of political parties there. Schoenbach,
Stuerzebecher, and Schneider (1998) and Weischenberg, L¨ offelholz, and
Scholl (1998), on the other hand, reject this view, the latter main-
taining that “for economic, technological and educational reasons,
there has been a convergence in journalism in the Western Democratic
countries” (251).
In terms of content, Kindelman (1994) found in a study of the re-
porting of the 1990 German Bundestag election that the major German
newspapers did have clearly identifiable slants in their coverage of the
partiesandcandidates,andSchulz(1996)discussingKindelman’sresults,
points out that German television news broadcasts, though less clearly,
also had distinguishable political slants (see also Kepplinger, Brosius,
and Staab 1991; Hagen 1993). German papers, it might be added, do not
openly campaign for political parties during election campaigns. Even
the Bild differs from the British popular press in this respect, though it
is recognized as clearly a paper of the political right and has the most
explicit value judgments on political candidates of any German paper
(SemetkoandSchoenbach1994:53),itdoesnotopenlyproclaimitssym-
¨
pathies (its banner proclaims that it is “Unabh¨angig – Uberparteilich”–
“Independent – Non-Partisan”).
The existence of a significant degree of external pluralism in the
German media – and also in the Swedish, despite apparently strong pro-
fessional values of separation of news and commentary – is suggested
in research by Patterson and Donsbach (1993; also Donsbach, Wolling,
and von Blomberg 1996) in which journalists were asked to place both
parties and news organizations on the political spectrum from left to
right. The results for Germany and Sweden are shown in Figure 6.1. In
both of these countries, as also in Italy and Britain, they placed the news
media across a wide spectrum, with television broadcasters grouped
relatively close to the center, reflecting requirements of internal plural-
ism, while newspapers varied widely in their political tendencies. United
States journalists, by contrast, placed all the news organizations

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This is consistent with Esser’s findings.
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Els de Bens, personal communication.
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