Page 299 - Comparing Media Systems THREE MODELS OF MEDIA AND POLITICS

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The Forces and Limits of Homogenization

(2000), however, using a narrower definition of political coverage, find
no consistent trend in the content of either the tabloid or broadsheet
press in Britain, and point out that “the very essence of tabloid provision
continues to be suffused with the political, or if you like, the ideologi-
cal” (87). Franklin (1997) reports a decline in reporting of Parliament in
British broadsheets in the 1990s. Negrine (1998) also reports a decline
in parliamentary coverage (British broadsheets had dedicated pages for
parliamentary coverage until the 1990s). He also reports declines in po-
litical reporting in French and German TV news. Pfetsch (1996) found a
decline in reporting of political institutions – government, Parliament,
parties – in German TV news, though not a decline in political coverage
overall, in part because coverage of political violence increased. Winston
(2002) shows that the percent of news items devoted to politics declined
from 21.5 percent on the main news bulletin of the BBC1 in 1975 to
9.6 percent in 2001, while the percent of items devoted to crime grew
from 4.5 to 19.1. ITN showed similar – slightly larger – shifts. Brants
(1998: 322) found that “in most countries commercial television has
not marginalized political news. In eight West European countries, al-
most six out of an average of 13.3 items per newscast in the early 1990s
were about politics.” Italian newspapers, finally, though they have be-
come more market oriented, have not decreased their political coverage:
samples of thirty issues of Italian newspapers in each year showed 80
political stories in 1966, 647 in 1976, 560 in 1986, and 1257 in 1996
(Mancini 2002). Of course, politics is treated differently than in the past,
through discourse genres that increase the possibility of dramatization
(Bionda et al. 1998; Mancini 2002). In television too the prevalence of
current affairs programs has increased, as these programs seem to be
popular with Italian viewers (Menduni 1998).
The question of whether political content will decrease with commer-
cialization thus clearly remains open.
Closely related to the question of whether political content will be
marginalized in an increasingly commercialized media system is the
question of whether commercialization is likely to lead to an alienation
of the mass public from political life. Again there are conflicting views.
Many have argued that focus of commercial media on private life, the
deemphasis of collective political actors, the emphasis on scandal, and
the often negative portrayal of political life will tend to undermine the
involvement of the public in the political process (e.g., Patterson 1993).
Changes in campaign style connected with the rise of commercial media
are also often seen as having this effect. Papathanassopoulos (2000: 56)

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