Media of Sweden - Journalist Bias

Journalist Bias

• Political party sympathies among Swedish journalists in 1999. Left Party (31 %) Social Democrats (27 %) Green Party (10 %) Centre Party (3 %) Liberal Party (14 %) Moderate Party (10 %) Christian Democrats (4 %)
• Political party sympathies among the general Swedish population in the same year. Left Party (15 %) Social Democrats (32 %) Green Party (6 %) Centre Party (4 %) Liberal Party (5 %) Moderate Party (25 %) Christian Democrats (13 %)

Media in Sweden is often criticized of being biased towards the political left. The Department of Journalism and Mass Communication (JMG) at Gothenburg University has conducted yearly surveys regarding their political party sympathies among the members of the Swedish Union of Journalists (Swedish: Journalistförbundet), the largest trade union organizing journalists in Sweden. A survey, conducted in late 1999, has shown a significant higher percentage of support for the centre-left political parties (mainly the Left Party and the Green Party) compared to these parties' support amongst the general Swedish population. 31 percent of the journalists favoured the Left Party, compared to 15 percent of the general population.

After the elections 2010, the researcher Kent Asp studied more than 1000 articles from Sweden's major newspapers and found a strong bias towards the political right. 43% of all articles written about the Red-Greens were negative, compared to only 27% written about the centre-right Alliance. When describing the political leaders of the two political blocks, a majority of all articles, 53% were negative in describing the Red-Green candidate Mona Sahlin, whereas only 30% of the articles about the Alliance candidate Fredrik Reinfeldt.

As regards to foreign policy issues, Swedish media has often been criticized of reporting biased towards the United States/the Bush administration, and towards Israel in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. A debate was sparked in 2004 when the Sveriges Radio correspondent in the United States, Cecilia Uddén, who was reporting from the 2004 presidential election, said during a live radio debate:

I don't think either that Swedish media have any requirement whatsoever regarding fairness when it comes to the U.S. election. We have no reason to be fair and present both sides views as we would have done in a Swedish election.
(Swedish: "Jag tycker heller inte att svenska medier har något som helst krav på sig på opartiskhet när det gäller valet i USA. Vi har ju ingen anledning att vara opartiska och redovisa båda ståndpunkter på samma sätt som vi skulle göra i ett svenskt val.")

After this statement Uddén was put into quarantine by the management of Sveriges Radio for the rest of the U.S. election. Uddén is currently the correspondent for Sveriges Radio in the Middle East. Regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Uddén has stated in an interview that "in order to be able to describe the conflict honestly you have to side with the weaker part " (Swedish: "För att kunna beskriva konflikten ärligt måste man ta part med den svagare sidan.")

It is also important to take into consideration, that many outlets are owned by corporations, therefore while the worker may have a 'left' political view, the owner and/or editor of the outlet may have a 'conservative' or pro-business one. There is not one national daily newspaper that is Social democratic or centre-left. One tabloid, Aftonbladet, has a social democratic editorial page.