Censorship in Sweden - Abolition of Censorship

Abolition of Censorship

Sweden was in 1766 the first country to introduce a constitutional law where censorship was abolished and the freedom of the press guaranteed. The Law on the Freedom of Printing of 1766 was written by a committee of the parliament, during the Swedish "Era of Freedom" (frihetstiden). This law was also the first in the world to make most documents of the state authorities open and available for the citizens. This principle from 1766 is still an important part of the Swedish Constitution, and all Freedom of Information Acts in the world has grown out an application - usually in a very diluted way - of this Swedish "principle of public availability". The most important founding father of this part of the Swedish constitution was Anders Chydenius who was a member of parliament in the ecclesiastical estate. The freedom of press is also guaranteed in the Free Press Statute of 1812.

After an interlude 1772-1809, with royal dictatorship and renewed suppression, the freedom of the press was reintroduced by the parliament in the Constitution of 1809-10. The constitutional prohibition against all forms of censorship before publication of books and other printed matters has since 1810 the strict formulation that is still a cornerstone of Sweden's freedom of the press. Not only is a censoring authority illegal, but also all other forms of court injunctions and other measures by the authorities to suppress or restrict a book or a paper before its publication. The injunctions that in many countries are sought by lawyers or officials, and given by the courts, to stop the publication or broadcasting of certain statements, facts or pictures are not possible in Sweden.

During the rule of king Charles XIV John the government had for a number of years power to administratively prohibit the further publication of newspapers. This was relatively easily circumvented by the press by small changes of newspapers' names, and the restrictions were abolished.

After the experiences during World War II (see below) a new Constitutional Law on the Freedom of Printing was decided by parliament in 1949. It gives a detailed constitutional protection of all steps in the way of a book or a newspaper from the protection of sources over the editing and printing to the distribution and the reading. This is done by special procedural rules for trials in all cases of press delicts, by trial by jury, by the requirement that no judgement of indemnity can be given if not a two-thirds majority of the jury has found the publication criminal - as well as through other rules that makes it impossible for the state or for private interests to take legal action against various persons or steps in the production.

The responsibility before the law rests only on the responsible publisher of a newspaper and only on the author of a book, with secondary rules only for such cases as books with an anonymous or an anknown author. It is not possible to take legal action against i.e. reporters, sources, distributors or printers because of the content of a book or a newspaper. The Swedish Constitution in this and a number of other ways gives very strong protection for the free word and the free press. Since 1992, the same level of protection is given to electronic media in a parallel Constitutional Law, although there are exceptions that allow regulation of radio and TV as well as censorship of films shown at cinemas.

Swedish law has a few criminal offences that concern misuse of the printed or spoken word. Among those is a law against hate speech. This is in Sweden seen as a crime against the state and public order, which means that legal action can be taken only by a special prosecutor that is under constitutional obligation to give special consideration to the importance of the free word for a free society.