Page 290 - Comparing Media Systems THREE MODELS OF MEDIA AND POLITICS

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TheFutureofthe ThreeModels

groups. Critical professionals, as Neveu (2002) puts it, “[S]pot blunders
in strategy, mistakes in governing, from an in-depth knowledge of issues.
Theyquestionpoliticiansinthenameofpublicopinionanditsrequests–
identified ‘objectively’ by the polls – or in the name of suprapolitical
values such as morality, modernity or the European spirit.”
Why did this change take place? Surely it was to a significant extent
rooted in the broader social and political changes discussed previously.
If, for example, affluence, political stability, and increasing educational
levels led to a general cultural shift toward “postmaterialist” value of par-
ticipation and free expression, the rise of critical expertise in journalism
might be seen as one effect of this deeper social change. It might be noted
that this change was not reflected only in journalism, but also in popular
culture more generally. It is reflected, for example, in the growth of polit-
ical satire on television, in the form of shows such as That Was the Week
that Was and Monty Python’s Flying Circus in Britain and The Smoth-
ers Brothers Show in the United States, comedy programs that relied
heavily on political humor. If catchall parties were already being formed
in the 1950s – Kirchheimer noted their rise in 1966 – the discourse of
a general public opinion made up of individualized voters committed
to “suprapolitical” values, which would be crucial to the perspective of
critical professionalism in journalism, may predate the latter. 7
Even if the rise of critical professionalism in the media was in part an
effect or reflection of other social forces, however, it seems likely that at
somepointitbegantoaccelerateandamplifythem.Itisalsopossiblethat
a number of factors internal to the media system contributed to the shift
in the political role of journalism, and thus in turn to the secularization
of European society and to the diminution of differences among political
systems. These internal factors include:

1. Increased educational levels of journalists, leading to more sophis-
ticated forms of analysis, in part by the incorporation into journal-
ism of critical perspectives from the social sciences and humanities.
2. Increased size of news organizations, leading to greater spe-
cialization and greater resources for news gathering and news
processing.

7 Marchetti (2000: 31) notes in a discussion of the rise of “investigative reporting” in
France: “ ... the depoliticization of the stakes of the political field induced by the
‘neoliberal alignment,’ particularly of the socialist party ... contributed to modifying
the conditions of political struggle. The weakening of traditional left/right oppositions,
the important fact of homogenization of political personnel trained by the schools of
power, has shifted the stakes of political struggle toward more strictly moral stakes. . . .”

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