Page 253 - Comparing Media Systems THREE MODELS OF MEDIA AND POLITICS

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The North Atlantic or Liberal Model

noted, was far higher than other countries, probably a reflection of the
fact that it shares with the United States the status of a world power,
but has a more centralized state and lacks the constitutional limits on
government censorship present in the United States. Clearly the fact that
the Liberal countries also are often world powers requires important
qualifications to the notion that the state plays a limited role in these
systems, as well as to the notion of the press as an independent “fourth
estate.”

GOVERNANCE OF BROADCASTING

In contrast to continental European systems in which political pluralism
is assumed to require the “physical presence” of the parties in broad-
casting, the assumption in the Liberal system is that in order for the
broadcasting system to serve a pluralistic society, it must be separated
from party politics and managed by neutral professionals without party
ties. The BBC is the classic case of what we called in Chapter 2 the pro-
fessional model of broadcast governance. In its formal structure, it is re-
ally no different from government-controlled or parliamentary systems:
The director general and board of governors are appointed by the queen
in council – in effect by the prime minister, and by convention with
the consent of the opposition. A strong cultural norm has developed,
however, that the governors should be “remarkable men and women . . .
of the highest calibre,” chosen not as representatives of political parties
but of society as a whole, willing to uphold the independence of British
broadcasting against political pressure. Journalists, producers, and other
creative personnel are similarly chosen without regard to party ties, and
have considerable autonomy; as Jeremy Tunstall (1993) has argued, the
BBC has historically been a “producer-driven” enterprise.
Political pressures do certainly affect the BBC (Etzioni-Halevy 1987;
Curran and Seaton 1997). They were particularly marked during the
1980s, when Margaret Thatcher frequently clashed with the BBC, as
she did with local governments and other institutions that remained
outside of ministerial control. The sharpest conflict was the Real Lives
affair in 1985, in which the home secretary asked the BBC governors to
cancel a documentary on Northern Ireland that included an interview
with a Sinn Fein leader. The BBC governors cancelled the scheduled
broadcast of the program, a decision that provoked a twenty-four-hour
strike by BBC journalists; the program was later broadcast in modified
form. Tensions reemerged in 2003 as Tony Blair’s government attacked

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