Page 305 - Comparing Media Systems THREE MODELS OF MEDIA AND POLITICS

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The Forces and Limits of Homogenization

of the audience makes catchall strategies less viable, at least for many
channels.
Finally, it is important to keep in mind that, as we saw in dis-
cussing professionalization in the Liberal systems in Chapter 7, neutral
professionalism in the news media was based in part on a separation of
journalism from the commercial logic of media industries. As commer-
cialization undercuts this separation, often reducing the autonomy of
journalists within media organizations and disrupting the boundaries
between news and entertainment, neutral professionalism is likely, not
to disappear, but to find itself reduced to one genre among many. This is
evident in the growth of “infotainment” genres, sometimes referred to as
the “new news” (Taylor 1992), which often depart from the traditional
professional ideal of objectivity.

DIFFERENTIATION AND DE-DIFFERENTIATION

In the final section of this chapter we return to the question posed in our
discussionofdifferentiationtheoryinChapter4andinaslightlydifferent
way at the beginning of this chapter: Does it make sense to understand
change in media systems in Western Europe and North America as a
process of “modernization” in the sense of structural-functionalism –
as a move toward increased differentiation of the media from other so-
cial institutions? Clearly in many ways this theoretical perspective seems
to fit. The process of secularization is certainly consistent with differen-
tiation theory. In the early twentieth century many European societies –
including those belonging to both our Democratic Corporatist and
Polarized Pluralist Models – were characterized by a strong fusion of
institutions and identities: ideological, social class, and religious identi-
ties were fused in important ways, as were institutions of party, church,
trade union, and mass media. In the last decades of the century these
connections were substantially dissolved, and the relations of media to
political parties as well as to individuals and social groups became much
more fluid, much less bound by stable loyalties or organizational con-
nections. As we saw in Chapter 4, Alexander argued that three major
forces propelled the process of differentiation of the media: demands for
moreuniversalisticinformationputforwardbynewsocialgroupsagainst
forms of advocacy journalism linked to the preexisting social order; the
growth of professional norms and self-regulation, leading toward the
development of journalistic autonomy; and, finally, the degree of uni-
versalisminnationalcivilcultures,whichisconnectedwithrational-legal

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