Page 296 - Comparing Media Systems THREE MODELS OF MEDIA AND POLITICS

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TheFutureofthe ThreeModels

related to one another – are personalization and the tendency to privilege
the point of view of the “ordinary citizen.” In Italian public broadcast-
ing in the 1980s, for example – at a time when commercial television
still was not allowed to broadcast news – spokesmen from each signif-
icant party appeared to comment on any major political story (Hallin
and Mancini 1984). They appeared as representatives of their parties,
not as individual characters in a dramatic portrayal of politics: polit-
ical logic dominated the presentation of news, and the personal char-
acteristics of these politicians were generally as irrelevant as those of
the news readers, who were rotated each night and had none of the
significance for the news audience of American anchors. By the 1990s
Berlusconi could dominate the news because he was a good story, and
the narrative logic of commercial news was increasingly dominant in
the Italian media scene. In the era of commercial media politicians in-
creasingly become “media stars” who act well beyond the borders of
politics: they appear in sport broadcasts, talk shows, and entertainment
programs (Mancini 2000). Personalization, it might be noted, is not ex-
clusively a characteristic of television, but of popular commercial media
generally:nowhereisitstrongerthaninthesensationalistpressofBritain,
Germany, or Austria; and it has increasing importance in print media
everywhere.
Another important manifestation of the new logic of commercial
media is the tendency to focus on the experience and perspective of
the “common citizen.” Earlier traditions of European journalism were
heavily focused on the perspectives of official representatives of parties,
organized groups, and the state (e.g., Hallin and Mancini 1984), while
with the shift toward commercial media the perspective of the individual
citizens is increasingly privileged (Neveu 1999; see also Blumler and
Gurevitch 2001). This results both from changes in news coverage and
the development of new forms of infotainment in which public issues are
discussed,suchasthetalkshow,wherepoliticians,iftheyappearatall,are
typically relegated to a secondary role, and “common sense,” as Leurdijk
(1997) puts it, is privileged over political discourse. As many analysts
have noted, these changes very likely have contributed to the erosion of
the influence of the traditional mass party and the social organizations
connected to it.
Commercialization contributes to a shift in the balance of power be-
tween the media and political institutions, with the media themselves
becoming increasingly central in setting the agenda of political commu-
nication. One important manifestation of this tendency is the increased

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