Page 312 - Comparing Media Systems THREE MODELS OF MEDIA AND POLITICS

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TheFutureofthe ThreeModels

papers disappear in Northern Europe, what does this mean: Are they
no longer needed, because the existing commercial media adequately
represent all the major interests in society? Or does this development
increase what Lindblom (1977) called “the privileged position of busi-
ness” in Western societies? This of course is a general issue raised by the
global trend toward neoliberalism, of which the specific case of media
commercialization is one important facet.
Here again, the relation between commercialization and profession-
alization is an important issue. Donsbach and Patterson (1993), for ex-
ample, after noting that news organizations – and they could add par-
ticularly commercial ones – tend to support the political right, at least
in their editorial positions, go on to argue that this is counterbalanced
by the fact that journalists in most countries shade somewhat to the
left. Their influence, then, might provide through other means some of
the balance lost through the decline of the political press. It is probably
true that the rise of “critical professionalism” in the 1960s and 1970s to
an important degree counterbalanced the effect of media concentration
and the diminution in the political diversity of news organizations that
accompanied it, producing greater degrees of internal pluralism to re-
place declining external pluralism. If, however, commercialization has
the effect of eroding journalistic professionalism over the long run, the
issue of diversity and political balance will presumably become more
pressing.
We cannot, unfortunately, resolve this issue here: as we noted in
Chapter 4, research that systematically addresses issues of media and
power in a comparative way is almost totally lacking.

CONCLUSION
The differences among national media systems described in the pre-
ceding chapters of this book are clearly diminishing. A global media
culture is emerging, one that closely resembles the Liberal Model we
explored in Chapter 7. The homogenization of media systems involves,
most centrally, the separation of media institutions from the strong ties
to the political world that distinguished both the Democratic Corpo-
ratist and Polarized Pluralist from the Liberal Model. This transforma-
tion has many causes. We have stressed a distinction between forces
external to European society, including direct influence from the United
States and the impact of technological innovation, and forces that are
essentially internal to European society, though certainly linked to the

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