Page 243 - Comparing Media Systems THREE MODELS OF MEDIA AND POLITICS

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The North Atlantic or Liberal Model

began in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Pulitzer’sNew
York World, for instance, established an internal Bureau of Accuracy and
Fairnessin1913,mainlytocutdownonthenumberoflibelsuits(Marzolf
1991: 66–8). Eventually, this function would become integrated into the
general organization of the editing process. News organizations in the
Liberalcountriesarecharacterizedbyextensiveeditorialhierarchieswith
many“checksandbalances”ontheworkofindividualjournalists,incon-
trast to many continental newspapers where journalists work separately,
with little editorial supervision (Donsbach 1995; Esser 1998).
As this last point about editorial control suggests, the professional-
ization that developed in Liberal societies actually has two sides as far
as journalistic autonomy is concerned. It constrains owners and often
has served to increase journalistic autonomy and limit instrumentaliza-
tion of the media. But it also constrains journalists, who are expected
to renounce any ambition of using their position as a platform for ex-
pressing their own political views, and to submit to the discipline of
professional routines and editorial hierarchies. 13 As noted previously,
the development of journalists’ unions in the 1920s and 1930s is prob-
ably one reason owners considered it in their interest to move toward
professionalization. The balance between the constraints on journalists
and the constraints on owners varies over time and also from one paper
to another. At times, the balance leans toward the owners enough that
professionalization actually facilitates instrumentalization of the press.
Thus Smith (1975: 35), discussing the campaign of the Express, then the
largest British paper, against the Labour party during the 1945 election,
quotes the editor as saying, “Even the Socialists on the staff – and there
were plenty – carried out their briefs with professional gusto. It was
all-in wrestling, hand-to-hand fighting, commando stuff, and we were,
we thought, very good at it.” Here professionalization takes a narrower
form: a “professional” is a journalist who has mastered the routines of
creating political news in the tabloid style, with heroes and villains that

13 One of the more interesting illustrations of the significance of these constraints is
the case of A. Kent MacDougall, a reporter for The Wall Street Journal who wrote
an article after he retired revealing that he was a Marxist, and telling fellow radicals
that they could make a difference working in the mainstream press. This created a
furor about “hidden radical influence” in the press, but analyses of MacDougall’s
reporting made it clear that most of the time it was not distinguishable from that of
other journalists (Reese 1990). K¨ ocher (1986) found British journalists less likely than
German journalists to endorse a “missionary” orientation toward expressing opinions
and shaping public opinion. The political slants of British newspapers, of course, are
not necessarily those of the individual journalists.

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