Page 67 - Comparing Media Systems THREE MODELS OF MEDIA AND POLITICS

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The Political Context of Media Systems

small number of banks that command much of the country’s capital
have exercised great influence over the media.
In the balance of the chapter we will focus specifically on the political
context of media systems.

THE ROLE OF THE STATE
The differing roles the state can play as owner, regulator, and funder of
the media are clearly rooted in more general differences in the role
of the state in society. At the most basic level, a distinction can be made
between liberal democracies – with the United States as the most obvious
example – and the welfare state democracies that predominate in Europe,
especially on the continent. The difference is obviously not absolute, as
the state plays a significant but also limited role in all capitalist democ-
racies. Nor is it a dichotomy: there are many shades of difference within
Europe, with Switzerland, for example, considerably in the direction
of the liberal pattern, compared with Sweden, Norway, or neighboring
Austria. But there is clearly an important distinction between the rela-
tively restricted role of the state in the U.S. and European traditions of
more active state intervention, and this distinction is strongly reflected
in the relation of the state to the media system. Just as the state in Europe
takes responsibility for funding health care; higher education; cultural
institutions such as symphony orchestras and operas; and often political
parties and churches, so it takes responsibility for funding television and
to a significant degree the press. The media have been seen in Europe,
for most of the twentieth century, as first social institutions and only
secondarily, if at all, private businesses. Just as the state in Europe is
expected to play an active role in mediating disputes between capital
and labor or in maintaining the health of national industries, it is ex-
pected to intervene in media markets to accomplish a variety of collective
goals from political pluralism and improving the quality of democratic
life (Dahl and Lindblom 1976; Gustafsson 1980) to racial harmony and
the maintenance of national language and culture. The difference be-
tween the United States and Europe in the degree of state intervention
may in fact be sharper in the case of the media than in other areas of
social life, as the American legal tradition gives press freedom – under-
stood in terms of the freedom of private actors from state intervention –
unusual primacy over other social values. One clear manifestation of
this difference can be seen in the fact that European countries generally
regulate political communication: many ban paid political advertising;

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