Page 46 - Comparing Media Systems THREE MODELS OF MEDIA AND POLITICS

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Concepts and Models

postmaterial values such as education, multiculturalism and socioeco-
nomic equality.” We will therefore use the more general term of political
parallelism, while recognizing that party-press parallelism in the stricter
sense does in some cases persist.
Political parallelism has a number of different components, and there
are a number of indicators that can be used to assess how strongly it
1
is present in a media system. Perhaps most basically, it refers to media
content – the extent to which the different media reflect distinct political
orientations in their news and current affairs reporting, and sometimes
also their entertainment content.
Historically, another of the most important components of politi-
cal parallelism is organizational connections between media and political
parties or other kinds of organizations, including trade unions, cooper-
atives, churches, and the like, which are often linked to political parties.
Through much of the twentieth century many media organizations were
connected to such institutions, which funded and helped to distribute
them and whose goals the media served in a variety of ways. These kinds
oforganizationalconnectionshavemostlydiedout,thoughwewillargue
that their influence can still be seen in the media institutions of coun-
tries where they were once strong. Another, closely related component
of political parallelism is the tendency for media personnel to be active in
political life, often serving in party or public offices. This is also much less
common today. Somewhat more common is a tendency in some systems
for the career paths of journalists and other media personnel to be shaped
by their political affiliations, in the sense that they work for media orga-
nizations whose politics coincide with their own, or get their jobs in part
because their media organizations want to balance the representation
of different political tendencies, or get the assignments they do because
their political affiliations open certain political doors for them.
Political parallelism is also often manifested in the partisanship of
mediaaudiences,withsupportersofdifferentpartiesortendenciesbuying
different newspapers or watching different TV channels.
Finally, it is manifested in journalistic role orientations and practices.
Journalists in some systems, and some historical periods, retain more of
the“publicist”rolethatonceprevailedinpoliticaljournalism –thatis,an
orientation toward influencing public opinion. Journalists in other sys-
temsorperiods,meanwhile,aremorelikelytoseethemselvesasproviders

1
One attempt to measure political parallelism across systems is Patterson and Donsbach
(1993).

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