Page 56 - Comparing Media Systems THREE MODELS OF MEDIA AND POLITICS

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Concepts and Models

PROFESSIONALIZATION AND POLITICAL PARALLELISM. One question that
might be raised here is why we have treated the degree of professional-
ization and political parallelism as separate dimensions. As we noted in
Chapter 1, the “Anglo-American” or Liberal media model is typically
taken as the norm against which other media systems are measured,
and one corollary of that conceptual framework is the idea that profes-
sionalization is essentially synonymous with “objectivity” and political
neutrality. In this view, a system in which media have ties to organized
social and political groups, and in which journalists retain elements of a
publicist conception of their role, is by definitionasysteminwhichpro-
fessionalization is weakly developed. If journalists are to serve the public
rather than particular interests, if they are to act according to specif-
ically journalistic standards of practice rather than following agendas
imposed from outside, they must act as neutral information providers
and avoid identification with particular points of view, according to this
interpretation.
Clearly the two dimensions of political parallelism and professional-
ization are in fact related. One way to think about professionalization is
in terms of differentiation theory: a high degree of professionalization of
journalism means that journalism is differentiated as an institution and
formofpracticefromotherinstitutionsandformsofpractice–including
politics; or to put it in terms of Bourdieu’s sociology, professionalization
exists where journalism is developed as a distinct field with significant
autonomy from other social fields, including the political field. (We will
go more deeply into both differentiation theory and Bourdieu’s field
theory in Chapter 4.) Where political parallelism is very high, with me-
dia organizations strongly tied to political organizations, and journalists
deeply involved in party politics, professionalization is indeed likely to
be low: journalists are likely to lack autonomy, except to the extent that
they enjoy it due to high political positions, and journalism is likely
to lack a distinct common culture and distinct sense of social purpose,
apart from the purposes of the political actors with which media are
affiliated. Or to put it the other way around, it is clear that historically
the development of journalistic professionalization eroded political par-
allelism in important ways, diminishing the control of parties and other
political organizations over the media, and creating common practices
that blurred the political distinctions among media organizations. Nev-
ertheless, we believe that the empirical relationship between these two
dimensions is only rough, and that there is no convincing justification
for treating them as conceptually synonymous.

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