Page 309 - Comparing Media Systems THREE MODELS OF MEDIA AND POLITICS

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The Forces and Limits of Homogenization

and entertainment – each with distinct social functions, is “the most
important internal structure of the system of mass media” (2000: 24).
But clearly commercialization undercuts this form of differentiation,
not only by blurring the boundaries between news and entertainment,
in fact, but also those between advertising and the other two, as product
placement, for example, increases in entertainment and as news is used
to cross-promote other products of media conglomerates.
It is, in sum, quite plausible to argue that the media are becoming less
differentiatedinrelationtotheeconomicsystem,evenastheyarebecom-
ing more differentiated in relation to the political system. Many would
argue that this is part of a general tendency toward de-differentiation in
contemporary society: that with the shift toward neoliberalism market
logictendstodominatewideswathsofsociety–includingpolitics,which
increasingly resembles marketing, education, leisure, social services, etc.
If an increasingly commercialized media are growing more central to
social life they may be an important agent of this broader process of
de-differentiation. This is clearly Bourdieu’s argument.

DIFFERENTIATION AND THE STATE
We have focused here on the tendency for media to become de-
differentiated in relation to the economic system. It is worth adding a
few words, however, about the relation of media to the state. The media,
as we have seen, have become increasingly differentiated over the course
of the twentieth century from organized social and political groups such
as parties, trade unions, and churches. Has their relation to the state
followed the same course? If we look at the past twenty years, we would
clearly say they have become more differentiated from the state as well.
Liberalization and deregulation have diminished the role of the state as
an owner, funder, and regulator of the media, and journalists have be-
come more assertive in relation to state elites. If we look over a longer
historical period, however, the picture is more complicated, and the di-
rection of change looks a lot less linear. In the early days of the newspaper
the state played an important role everywhere, printing official gazettes
and often taxing, subsidizing, and censoring the media. During the nine-
teenth century, as we have seen, there was a general shift toward press
freedom, which took place at different rates in different countries: the
media became separated from the state in important ways, especially in
the Liberal and Democratic Corporatist countries, and became rooted

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