Page 207 - Comparing Media Systems THREE MODELS OF MEDIA AND POLITICS

P1: GLB/IRK/kaa P2: KAF
0521835356c06.xml Hallin 0 521 83535 6 January 28, 2004 21:0

The North/Central European Model

opportunity in Germany is still characterized by the traditionally strong
and constitutionally entrenched role of the political parties. The success
of political programmes is the result of complex negotiation processes
and compromises in the parliamentary groups and party organizations,
which are accompanied by efforts to generate support in the media only
in the course of negotiation.”
As we noted in Chapter 5, this kind of communication process, in
which parties and other organized social groups are central – something
that the Democratic Corporatist countries share to a degree with the
Mediterranean countries, particularly Italy – is close to what James
Curran calls the “radical democratic” public sphere. Curran (1991: 30)
identifies the “radical democratic” public sphere with the countries of
Northern Europe covered in this chapter, defining it in terms of the view
that:

a democratic media system should represent all significant inter-
ests in society. It should facilitate their participation in the public
domain, enable them to contribute to public debate and have an
impact in the framing of public policy. The media should also fa-
cilitate the functioning of representative organizations and expose
their internal processes to public scrutiny and the play of public
opinion. In short a central role of the media should be defined
as assisting the equitable negotiation or articulation of competing
interests through democratic processes.

Curran goes on to contrast this with the liberal system, in which “the
media are conceived as vertical channels of communication between pri-
vate citizens and government”: in the “radical democratic” conception,
Curran argues, “media are viewed as a more complex articulation of
vertical, horizontal and diagonal channels of communication between
individuals, groups and power structures. This takes account of the
fact individual interests are safeguarded and advanced in modern lib-
eral democracies partly through collective organizations like political
parties and pressure groups, and at a strategic level through the con-
struction and recomposition of alliances and coalitions (31).” Curran’s
conception describes an important element of the media systems of
the Democratic Corporatist countries, where media institutions have
long been among the “consociational devices” (Lijphart 1977; Colomer
1996) through which intergroup relations are managed. In practice, of
course, as Curran recognizes, a public sphere organized in this way is

189