Europe And The United States Three Media System Is A Comparative Study

The relationship between media and politics is one of the most important issues that western journalism and communication studies concern. As a social institution, media is a part of the society. Therefore media is shaped by the social and political structure inevitably. On the other hand, during the process of the interaction of media and politics, media also affects the whole society. The relationship between media and politics can be called media system.We are used to call European and North American countries as western countries, but there are many differences between them. In the book Comparing Media Systems: Three Models of Media and Politics, the authors classify 18 countries of Europe and North America to be three models: the North Atlantic/Liberal Model, the Mediterranean/Polarized Pluralist Model and the North/Central European/Democratic Corporatist Model.The North Atlantic/Liberal Model includes Britain, Ireland, America and Canada. It is a media system building on the basis of liberalism which emphasizes individualism, constraining government power, pluralism and the majority rule. In this model, commercial media emerged earlier and dominant the media market. The media that close to political parties and social groups almost cannot survive. Journalistic professionalism prevails in all the countries of this model, and the ideas of separation of news and opinion and objective reporting are accepted. State seldom intervenes the specific content and action of the media, although there was permission in the broadcasting field.the Mediterranean/Polarized Pluralist Model contains Italy, Greece, Portugal, Spain and France. In this region, most Mediterranean countries have a long history of contest and democratic transformation. Therefore, media have tied to political powers very closely. The degree of political parallelism in the model is very high. The circulation of the mass press is not as much as the media in other European countries and the commercial media are not very strong. The journalistic organizations are also not developed.the North/Central European/Democratic Corporatist Model includes Norway, Sweden, Finland, Belgium, Denmark, Netherlands, Germany, Austria and Switzerland. This model is similar to Liberal Model, but many differences as well. From the perspective of liberalist, the high level development of mass press is related with the separation from politics, but Democratic Corporatist Model is a coexistence of these two factors. The journalistic professionalization of this model are developed strongly, in the form of journalistic union or association and the consensus of journalists with the journalistic ethic codes.This study of three models brought new perspective and ideas to the comparative media systems, but also got some problems. Firstly, the authors asserted empirical method was the principal method they used, but actually there was a combination of empirical approach and normative approach. Secondly, three models are determined by political factors in this book, but the strong development of media nowadays affects political system deeply. This cannot be ignored.