Page 287 - Comparing Media Systems THREE MODELS OF MEDIA AND POLITICS

P1: GCV
0521835356agg.xml Hallin 0 521 83535 6 January 21, 2004 16:18

The Forces and Limits of Homogenization

One might, therefore, have expected electronic media to reinforce rather
than to undercut the traditional role of political parties and organized
social groups. Why did this not occur?
OneaccountoftheimpactoftelevisionisprovidedbyWigbold(1979),
focusing on the particularly interesting Dutch case. Broadcasting was or-
ganized in the Netherlands following the pillarized model that applied to
the press, education, and other cultural institutions. Each of the different
communities of Dutch society had a separate broadcasting organization,
just as they had traditionally had separate schools and newspapers. One
might have thought that by extending their reach to a powerful new
medium, the pillars would have become even more entrenched in Dutch
society.Nevertheless,depillarizationclearlydidcoincidehistoricallywith
the rise of television. Wigbold makes the argument that Dutch television
“destroyed its own foundations, rooted as they were in the society [it]
helped to change” (230).
His argument has three parts. First, he argues that despite the exis-
tence of separate broadcasting organizations, television broke down the
separateness of the pillars:

Television was bound to have a tremendous influence in a coun-
try where not only the doors of the living room were closed to
strangersbutalsothedoorsofschoolrooms,unionmeetings,youth
hostels, football grounds and dancing schools. ... It confronted the
masses with views, ideas and opinions from which they had been
isolated. ... [T]here was no way out, no hiding place, except by
the difficult expedient of switching the set off. Television viewers
could not even switch to a second channel, because there wasn’t
one. ... Catholics discovered that Socialists were not the dangerous
atheists they had been warned about, Liberals had to conclude that
orthodox Protestants were not the bigots they were supposed to be
(201).

Second, he argues that television journalists shifted substantially in
the early 1960s toward a more independent and critical relationship
with the leaders of established institutions, to whom they had previously
deferred.
Third, a new broadcasting organization (TROS), which was the
broadcasting equivalent of the catchall party, was founded at the end
of the 1960s: originating from a pirate broadcaster, it provided light
entertainment and “was the very negation of the broadcasting system

269