Page 43 - Comparing Media Systems THREE MODELS OF MEDIA AND POLITICS

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Comparing Media Systems

Table 2.3 Proportion of Public Watching or Reading News Every
Day, and the Ratio of Television to Newspaper Consumption,
European Union Countries, 2001

Television Newspapers TV/Newspapers

Greece 65 13 5
Portugal 64 20 3.20
Spain 72 24 3
Italy 83 30 2.77
France 62 26 2.38
Belgium 60 30 2
United Kingdom 71 47 1.51
Ireland 67 46 1.46
Denmark 70 51 1.37
Netherlands 77 60 1.28
Finland 79 67 1.17
Germany 68 59 1.15
Austria 61 55 1.11
Sweden 69 70 0.99

Source: Eurobarometer: Public Opinion in the European Union.Report
No. 55, October 2001. Brussels: European Commission.

However, there are a number of other aspects of the structure of me-
dia markets that will enter into our analysis from time to time. One of
these,closelyrelatedtothedevelopmentofamasscirculationpress,isthe
distinction between media systems characterized by a clear separation
between a sensationalist mass press and “quality” papers addressed to
an elite readership (Britain is the strongest example) and those that lack
such stratification of the newspaper market (or where it is developed to
only a limited extent), either because they lack a mass circulation press
altogether or because they are dominated by newspapers that serve elite
and mass readerships simultaneously. Newspaper markets also vary in
the balance of local, regional, and national newspapers. Some (Britain,
Austria,Italy,Spain)aredominatedbyanationalorsuper-regionalpress,
some by local papers (the United States, Canada, Switzerland) and some
(Germany, France, Scandinavia) have a combination of both. National
newspaper markets, as we shall see, tend to produce a more politically
differentiated press. Some media markets are simply bigger than oth-
ers, which can have important implications for the number of media

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