Page 303 - Comparing Media Systems THREE MODELS OF MEDIA AND POLITICS

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The Forces and Limits of Homogenization

from the 1950s to 1970s, but has subsequently strengthened. In Europe,
Communist and in some cases Fascist parties have declined, as have
differences between traditional parties of the left and right. But new
extremist parties have arisen on the right in many countries, motivated
by opposition to immigration, multiculturalism, and European integra-
tion, while Green parties have grown on the left and there are some signs
that other parts of the left may persist or even grow. In France in the first
round of the 2002 presidential election the right-wing National Front
beat out the centrist Socialists, getting 17 percent of the vote, while the
Greens and Trotskyists did well on the left.
Homogenization is usually taken to mean a shift toward the neutral
journalistic professionalism, of the sort that has been particularly strong
in the United States. This, as we have seen, is clearly the prediction
of modernization/differentiation theory, which sees media institutions
built around the idea of neutral professionalism as the most developed.
And indeed there has been a significant trend in this direction. But
here there are quite important limitations and countertrends that need
to be stressed. Not only do forms of advocacy journalism persist in
European countries where they have always been strong, but new forms
are also beginning to proliferate, and this is occurring in the Liberal at
least as much as in other systems. If there is convergence here, it is not
proceeding only in one direction.
In Chapter 5, we saw that advocacy forms of journalism have per-
sisted in the Polarized Pluralist countries, particularly in Italy, Spain,
and Greece. In Italy, though the press has become more market ori-
ented since the 1970s, the papers that have led this shift, for example La
Repubblica and Il Giornale, have strong political identities, and attempts
to establish neutral papers have failed. In Spain most of the media, print
and broadcast alike, became divided during the 1980s and 1990s into
two opposing political camps. In Greece, Papathanassopoulos (2001)
argues that increasingly popular, market-oriented forms of journalism
have not eliminated the pattern of political instrumentalization of the
news media, but have shifted the balance of power away from politicians
and toward the media owners, who have increasingly powerful tools of
political pressure. Deregulation and commercialization have produced
sensationalismbutnotneutrality,accordingtoPapathanassopoulos,who
quotes Zaharopoulos and Paraschos’s (1993: 96) comment that “the vast
majority of Greek media are unabashedly partisan, sensational, and po-
litical.” The same pattern prevails in Italy (Bechelloni 1995; Mancini
2000; Roidi 2001).

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