Page 54 - Comparing Media Systems THREE MODELS OF MEDIA AND POLITICS

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Concepts and Models

journalism is thus likely to be manifested in criteria of newswor-
thiness on which journalists will agree regardless of their political
orientations, as well as a tendency for journalists to define their
standing in the field in terms of the opinions of fellow journal-
ists, rather than those of outsiders – political party leaders, for ex-
ample, or stockholders. Obviously the existence of distinct profes-
sional norms is related to autonomy, in the sense that such norms
could not govern the practice of journalism if that practice were
controlled by outside actors. We shall see that there are important
variations in the degree to which distinctively journalistic norms
have evolved, the degree of consensus they enjoy among those who
practice journalism, and their relative influence on news-making
practices.
(3) Public service orientation. Another important element of the con-
cept of “professionalism” is the notion that professions are oriented
toward an ethic of public service. This has been a particularly con-
troversial point in the sociology of the professions. Parsons (1939)
stressed the public service orientation of professionalism as part of a
critique of the Marxist idea that the development of capitalism dis-
places all motivations other than those of “cold calculation.” Siebert,
Peterson, and Schramm’s social responsibility theory of the press
belongs to this era in the scholarship on professionalism. A wave
of revisionist scholarship beginning in the 1960s stressed against
Parsons that the “altruism” of the professions needed to be un-
derstood as an ideology that often concealed other ends, serving,
particularly, to justify the economic monopoly and social power of
professionals. Much of the classic sociology of journalism of this era
was similarly concerned with the critique of the ideology of journal-
istic professionalism, and certainly it would be na¨ ıve in the extreme
to accept the claims of journalists to serve the public purely at face
value.
Nevertheless, the adoption of an ideology of journalism as a “pub-
lic trust” is an important historical development and should not be
dismissed as “mere ideology” any more than it should be accepted as
pure altruism. It is a historically specific conception of the journal-
ist’s role in society with important consequences for the practice of
journalism and the relation of the media to other social institutions;
and its differential development in different societies needs to be ex-
plained. The ethic of public service may be particularly important in
the case of journalism, compared with other occupations claiming

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