Page 304 - Comparing Media Systems THREE MODELS OF MEDIA AND POLITICS

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TheFutureofthe ThreeModels

In Chapter 6 we saw that in the Democratic Corporatist countries,
though there has been an important trend toward neutrality as a jour-
nalistic norm and market strategy, political parallelism in the national
press persists, and shows no sign of vanishing in the immediate future.
In Liberal systems, meanwhile, new forms of advocacy journalism are
proliferating. In the United States, politicized talk programs on both
radio and cable TV have become increasingly common, and Fox News
has differentiated itself from other broadcast networks with a clear po-
litical profile, evident in both content and the political preferences of its
audience.
The evidence suggests that there is no necessary connection between
commercialization of media and neutral professionalism. The shift to-
wardcommercializationislikelytocreatenewformsofadvocacyjournal-
ism and political parallelism, even as it undercuts old ones. Commercial-
ization can, without question, increase pressures toward “catchallism”
and therefore toward neutral professionalism. This seems to happen
under specific market conditions, however – most strongly in highly
concentrated local newspaper markets. Indeed, neutral professionalism
seems to flourish best where competitive pressures are not particularly
intense (Hallin 2000) – in monopoly local newspapers (in the U.S. case
especiallywhencompetitionfromothermediawaslessintenseandwhen
newspaper companies were not listed on the stock exchange); in pub-
lic service broadcasting, where the latter has political independence; or,
again in the U.S. case, in the government-regulated oligopoly broad-
casting that prevailed before deregulation in the 1980s. In other cases
commercial pressures can encourage media to differentiate themselves
politically and to stress the color and drama of opinion over the gray
utility of information. Thus in Chapter 7 we saw that the competitive
Britishpress–especiallythetabloidpress–ismuchmorepoliticizedthan
the monopoly American press. Under the right political and economic
conditions, opinion sells. This is obvious not only in the tabloid press,
particularly in Britain, Germany, and Austria, but also in Spanish radio,
wherethehostsof“tertulias”–politicaldiscussionprograms–buildtheir
popularity on the strong expression of opinions and command princely
salaries as a result (Barrera 1995), or in American cable TV, where opin-
ions are also central to the popularity of talk show hosts and increasingly
journalists as well (e.g., Rutenberg 2002). The “commercial deluge” of
the past twenty years is also accompanied by a dramatic expansion in the
number of channels of electronic media, and seems likely for this rea-
son to produce new forms of political parallelism, as the fragmentation

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