Page 225 - Comparing Media Systems THREE MODELS OF MEDIA AND POLITICS

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The North Atlantic or Liberal Model

withacatchallaudience.InthecaseofIreland,atabloidmarketdoesexist,
but it is mostly dominated by British imports, which account for about
20 percent of daily and 26 percent of Sunday circulation. The British
newspaper market is essentially unique in the sharp separation that ex-
ists between quality and mass papers and the market dominance of the
latter–in1994,mass-markettabloidsaccountedfor54percentofthecir-
culation of national dailies and midmarket tabloids accounted for an ad-
ditional 27 percent. Germany is perhaps the closest comparison, but the
strength of the local press in Germany diminishes the significance of the
Bild, which overwhelmingly dominates the market for “street papers.”

POLITICAL PARALLELISM

The commercial press that developed so strongly in North America and
in Britain played a pioneering role in developing what Chalaby (1996)
calls a “fact-centered discourse.” Commercial papers emphasized news
at the expense of the political rhetoric and commentary that had domi-
nated earlier papers. They were innovators in the development of orga-
nizational infrastructure to gather news rapidly and accurately, as well
as in the development of the cultural forms of factual reporting. In his
comparison between French and Anglo-American papers early in the
twentieth century, Chalaby notes that the British and American papers
had more information, more accurately and more recently reported;
more wide-ranging in its focus, as British and American papers had net-
works of correspondents around the world; and, finally, more “factually
presented,” without the strong mixture of facts and personal opinion
that characterized French journalism. Journalists in the Liberal countries
remain more oriented toward informational and narrative styles of writ-
ing compared with continental journalists, who give greater emphasis to
commentary, though the differences have diminished.
Often it is assumed that this kind of “fact-centered discourse” goes
naturallywithastanceofpoliticalneutralityandthatastrongcommercial
press inevitably means a low level of political parallelism.
. . . [F]rom the 1850s onwards, Anglo-American journalists began
to make the typically journalistic claim to be neutral and objec-
tive.... [E]ven though what they wrote was politically arbitrary,
they generally did not admit any political allegiance or even pref-
erence. In any case, the emphasis on news and information did not
give much space to Anglo-American journalists to express their
opinions (Chalaby 1996: 311).

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