Page 21 - Comparing Media Systems THREE MODELS OF MEDIA AND POLITICS

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Introduction

example, the highly interpretive character of American compared with
Italian TV news, a characteristic that contradicted common assump-
tions about “objective” journalism in the American system (Hallin and
Mancini 1984).
Comparative analysis makes it possible to notice things we did not
noticeandthereforehadnotconceptualized,anditalsoforcesustoclarify
the scope and applicability of the concepts we do employ. Comparative
studies, as Bendix (1963: 535) puts it, “provide an important check on
the generalizations implicit” in our concepts and forces us to clarify
the limits of their application. Sociologists, for example, had assumed
“urbanization” to be so closely associated with secularism and Western
forms of individualism that the latter could be treated as part of the
very notion of urbanism – a generalization that, Bendix argued, fell
apart when we looked at India or other non–Western societies. In a
similar way we will try to clarify the conceptual definitions of a number
of key concepts in media studies – journalistic professionalization, for
example – and to use comparative analysis to discover which aspects of
those concepts really do vary together and which do not.
If comparison can sensitize us to variation, it can also sensitize us to
similarity, and that too can force us to think more clearly about how we
might explain media systems. In the United States, for example, media
coverage of politicians has become increasingly negative over the past
few decades. We typically explain that change by reference to historical
events such as Vietnam and Watergate, as well as changes in the con-
duct of election campaigns. This trend is not, however, unique to the
United States. Indeed, it is virtually universal across Western democra-
cies. The generality of this change, of course, suggests that particular
historical events internal to the United States are not an adequate expla-
nation. Comparative analysis can protect us from false generalizations,
as Bendix says, but can also encourage us to move from overly particular
explanations to more general ones where this is appropriate.
Of course, comparative analysis does not automatically bring these
benefits. It can be ethnocentric itself, imposing on diverse systems a
framework that reflects the point of view of one of these – though this
is probably most true of work that, similar to Four Theories of the Press,
purports to be comparative but is not in fact based on comparative
analysis. We will argue later in this chapter that ethnocentrism has been
intensified in the field of communication by the strongly normative
character of much theory. Comparison can indeed be ethnocentric. We
believe, however, the comparative method properly applied provides a

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