Page 41 - Comparing Media Systems THREE MODELS OF MEDIA AND POLITICS

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Comparing Media Systems

Table 2.1 Newspaper Sales per
1,000 Adult Population, 2000

Norway 719.7
Finland 545.2
Sweden 541.1
Switzerland 453.7
United Kingdom 408.5
Germany 375.2
Austria 374.3
Denmark 347.1
Netherlands 345.9
United States 263.6
Canada 205.7
Ireland 191
France 190
Belgium 186.5
Spain 129.4
Italy 121.4
Portugal 82.7
Greece 77.5

Source: World Association of
Newspapers, World Press Trends.

newspaper markets of Northern Europe, on the other hand, have sus-
tained strong commercial media enterprises, though as we shall see in
many high-circulation countries commercial media have coexisted with
media rooted more in the world of politics: the growth of a mass circu-
lation press is by no means synonymous with commercialization.
One interesting manifestation of this difference in patterns of devel-
opment of the press is the fact that there are large gender differences
in newspaper readership in Southern Europe, while these differences
are small or nonexistent in the other regions covered here. This pat-
tern is shown in Table 2.2, which shows gender gaps ranging from a
35 percent difference between male and female readership in Portugal,
to only 1 percent in Sweden. This reflects historical differences in liter-
acy rates, as well as differences in the function of the media. Because the
media were closely tied to the political world in Southern Europe, and
because women were historically excluded from that sphere, the habit of
newspaper reading never developed among women there.

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