Page 263 - Comparing Media Systems THREE MODELS OF MEDIA AND POLITICS

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The North Atlantic or Liberal Model

arguments of the lawyers on both sides and the decisions of the courts.
One of the differences Benson (2000: 438) found in his comparative
study of U.S. and French coverage of immigration was a considerably
greater prevalence of politically neutral sources (bureaucrats, judi-
cial sources, and unaffiliated individuals) in U.S. news as opposed
to French news.
Third,astrongregimeofrational-legalauthorityreducesthetendency
for media owners to form partisan alliances, and thus reduces the impor-
tance of the kind of “instrumentalization” that is particularly prevalent
in the Mediterranean countries. As we have seen, one important initial
effect of civil service reform was to cut off the kinds of patronage that
connected newspaper owners and editors to partisan clientelist networks
in the nineteenth century. More generally, because the Weberian state is
based on universalistic rules that treat similarly situated actors equiva-
lently, there is less incentive for business in general – including media
owners – to be directly involved in party politics. This does not mean that
business has no stake in political outcomes or does not try to influence
them. Indeed, the legal and administrative rules in liberal societies often
serve precisely to institutionalize the influence of business over public
policy, though at times they may open avenues for other social groups to
have an influence. Most analysts of the FCC, for example, have described
it as generally protective of established broadcasting interests, though
in the 1960s, when the courts expanded “standing rights” to intervene
in regulatory decisions to a wider range of social groups, the process
became more pluralistic (as it did in the 1980s, in a different way, when
a greater range of business interests began to have a stake in telecom-
munication policy) (Horwitz 1989). The American state is considered to
be highly penetrable by social interests, partly because of federalism and
division of powers. Business is active in attempting to influence political
decisions that affect its interests, mainly through lobbying and cam-
paign contributions, and media corporations are no exception. In 1998,
for example, media firms spent $28.5 million on lobbying, a bit more
than securities and investment firms, though less than airlines, electric
utilities, or defense contractors (Lewis 2000). The relationships between
media companies and politicians generally cut across party lines, how-
ever, rather than taking the form of stable partisan alliances or clientelist
networks. The FCC favored the broadcast networks in general, at least
until the deregulation in the 1980s, not one network under Republicans
and a different network under Democrats. The rules of administrative
law by which an American regulatory agency operates would make it

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