Who will monitor television?
- More and more sources provide information, and more and more (consumers) can receive it.
- More profit, less ideology.
- The public sector is growing; the personnel is shrinking.
Three conclusions on the mass medias development in recent years.
These hypotheses were presented by Olle Stenholm, press ombudsman, at a recent seminar on the future at the Department of Journalism, Media and Communication in Stockholm.
Olle Stenholm, who is an experienced journalist whose background includes, among other things, Moscow correspondent (he was expelled from the Soviet Union), host of Magasinet on TV2 and Efter 3 on Swedish Radios P 3, and head of Dagens Eko. He is currently the press ombudsman; people who have complaints against the newspapers can turn to him.
The press ombudsmans three main rules are truth, impartiality and empathy. Following those three criteria, he works with those cases that are reported to him and that can be taken up by the Swedish Press Council, where the newspapers can be ordered to publish corrections and/or pay damages. (If you have a complaint about television or radio you have to go to the Swedish Broadcasting Commission, which is a government agency and significantly more bureaucratic and clumsy.)
Here are Olle Stenholms three trains of thought:
- Technological developments have meant that more and more players can provide information and more and more people can receive it, especially via the Internet.
- Economic developments mean that media companies are investing more in profits (earning money) than in ideology (better programs, better journalism). (This thesis was also presented quite skillfully and convincingly by the journalist and his TV4 coworker Gran Rosenberg in a debate at Publicistklubben on February 16.)
- Cultural developments the public sphere is growing, and the private is shrinking; this certainly has to do with increased media production. We are getting more and more information from more and more sources. But immigration to Sweden has naturally also played, and plays, a big role, among other things, in terms of other ethical norms and sometimes also habits from other media ethics guidelines. Actually, you only have to go as far as our neighboring countries of Norway and Denmark, which often have other criteria when it comes, for example, to publishing the names of criminals.
One question that was, of course, taken up in the seminar was how one would achieve similar opportunities for the broadcast medias consumers as the newspapers: is there a need for an ombudsman in this field as well, in addition to the Swedish Broadcasting Commission?
Another issue is also key: how to control the Internet and who monitors, for example, the commercial radio and the other commercial television channels that operate in Sweden. Channel 5 and TV3 are subject to English (Common) Law, but target a Swedish audience. Both also provide news and/or social programming and documentaries. Who monitors them?
