Page 56 - Comparing Political Communication Theories, Cases, and Challenge

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Daniel C. Hallin and Paolo Mancini

Third, a new broadcasting organization (Televisie Radio Omroep
Stichting [TROS]) was founded at the end of the 1960s that was the
broadcasting equivalent of the catch-all party: originating from a pirate
broadcaster, it provided light entertainment and “was the very negation
of the broadcasting system based ... on giving broadcast time to groups
that had something to say” (225).
The Dutch case is unique in many ways, of course. Still, it seems
likely that each of these factors had close parallels across most of Europe:
the role of television as a common ground, the development of criti-
cal journalism, not only in television but in the media generally, and
commercialization.

TELEVISION AS A COMMON GROUND
Across Europe, broadcasting was organized under political authority,
and often incorporated principles of proportional representation drawn
from the political world. Nevertheless, it is quite plausible that it served
as a social and political common ground and had some role in weakening
separate ideological subcultures. It was highly centralized, with one to
three channels (of television and of radio) in most of the post–World
WarIIperiod.Mostprogrammingwasaimedattheentirepublic,regard-
lessofgroupboundaries.Theproductionofnewswasgenerallyboundby
the principle of political neutrality, which separated broadcast journal-
ism from the traditions of partisan commentary that often characterized
the print press (in the Dutch case, while the pillarized broadcasting orga-
nizations produced public affairs broadcasts, news, similar to sports, was
produced by the umbrella organization Nederlandse Omroep Stichting
[NOS]). Television entertainment, meanwhile, provided a common set
of cultural references, whose impact on political culture would be very
difficult to document, but certainly might have been quite significant.

THE JOURNALIST AS “CRITICAL EXPERT”
In both Western Europe and the United States, there was a significant
shift in the 1960s and 1970s from a form of journalism that was relatively
deferential toward established elites and institutions, toward a relatively
more active, independent form of journalism that Padioleau (1985), in a
comparativestudyofLeMondeandTheWashingtonPost,termed“critical
expertise.” This shift took place both in electronic and print media. In

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