Page 262 - Comparing Media Systems THREE MODELS OF MEDIA AND POLITICS

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The Three Models

to enforce controls on the press). In the United States, constitutional-
ism also contributes to the strength of the legal system, which, as Wiebe
(1967) argues, was expanded in the same period of rationalization that
produced civil service reform, as the judiciary stepped in, often with the
consent of other branches of government, to provide the kind of broad
national policy framework a particularistic party system could not pro-
vide. In the United States these developments were also accompanied by
other reforms intended to reduce party-political control of public ad-
ministration, including the phenomenon of the nonpartisan election –
a bizarre notion to most Europeans – that is common in many local gov-
ernments particularly in Western states and that leaves American voters
poring through piles of campaign flyers trying to figure out the party
affiliations of candidates for local office (Ireland also has nonpartisan
elections in some localities).
The development of rational-legal authority has a number of con-
sequences for the media system. First, it establishes a cultural context
in which the notion of neutral professionalism is seen as both plausi-
ble and desirable. Journalistic professionalism began to develop more
or less simultaneously with the professionalization of public adminis-
tration and the growing authority of the courts. In the United States,
journalists and newspaper owners were often deeply involved in the
Progressive Movement that championed neutral public administration
over party politics (Nord 2001) and the professional culture of Ameri-
can journalism is often seen as having its roots in Progressivism (Gans
20
1979). As noted in the preceding text, Schudson (1978) attributes the
rise of the objectivity norm in American journalism to this cultural
context.
Second, it provides authoritative sources of information that can be
considered as politically neutral and that provide the basis of the in-
formational model of journalism that prevails most strongly in the
United States. In the 1870s, for example, charges of electoral fraud –
a common news story in postelection periods – were fought out in
the political arena by the parties. No neutral sources of informa-
tion existed; newspapers participated in the partisan battle, cham-
pioning one side or the other. By the end of the century, most
such disputes were moving from the political arena into the courts
and newspapers were increasingly reporting in “objective” fashion the

20
Ryfe (forthcoming) discusses in some detail the ambivalent relationship between
journalistic professionalism and political culture of Progressivism.

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