Journalists Mimic the language of Politicians
Journalists adjust to the language of politicians and government agencies when it comes to reporting on immigration.
"If the government believes that Sweden needs labor, newspapers write about newly arrived immigrants in a positive manor. If the government demands a more restrictive immigration policy, this affects the media, says the scholar Gunilla Hultén, who has studied 50 years of news reporting.
One clear example is the use of the word "immigrant" in news reporting, which gained ground in media after the Swedish Immigration Board was founded in 1969.
In her dissertation "On the Strange Side: Estrangement and National Community in Four Swedish Newspapers after 1945" Gunilla Hultén has studied how Swedish dailies Dagens Nyheter, Arbetarbladet, Vestmanlands Läns Tidning and Borås Tidning have portrayed people of foreign heritage.
According to Gunilla Hultén, immigration policy was largely bipartisan until the end of the 90s. However, in the two most recent elections this unity has been broken by the Liberal Party, which has come up with several proposals that have been criticized for being xenophobic.
"This, in combination with the success of the nationalist party the Swedish Democrats, the most recent election, may pave the way for more openly far right tones in the public debate as well as in news reporting."
During the past decade, several scholars, such as Ylve Brune, have shown that Swedish journalism suffers from an "us and them" way of thinking. But according to Gunilla Hultén, there are still many journalists who do not dare to admit to this perception being true.
"Journalists in Sweden carry with them a colonial heritage that can be discerned in newspapers' "us Swedes" and "those of other ethnic background."
She believes that, for that reason, journalists should "dare to battle more with themselves" and take a stand on whether it is actually relevant to reveal a person's ethnicity.
"One has to ask what is actually important to tell," she says.
Media scholar Ylva Brune gave harsh criticism to journalist Gert Svensson at Dagens Nyheter last year. She believed that he had contributed to the spread of racial prejudice in a series of articles about honor culture, young men with foreign background and their view of Swedish young women. The background for the articles was that a 14-year-old girl was raped by several young men in a parking lot in Rissne, a suburb of Stockholm. A few teenage boys were detained, suspected of having committed the rape. They were of foreign background, and the girl was an ethnic Swede.
"There was a perception in the air at the newspaper when I wrote the articles that men of other cultures have a condescending view of Swedish girls. There was a lot of time pressure and this view was somehow built into the task. In the articles I drew a direct link between this condescending view and the actual rape. I had no basis for this, and I would be more cautious on this point today."
While Gert Svensson has taken in the criticism, he says that stories should not be silenced just because they are not politically correct.
"Journalists can't be scared of discussing things like the notion that it can be hard for a man from a so-called honor culture to meet lightly dressed Swedish women."
Gert Svensson says that the pressure of time and the requirements of storytelling in news reporting often make it difficult to take a step back and reflect. Gunilla Hultén sees the same trend in her research. She predicts that journalism in the future will be characterized by increased politicization - and increased polarization.
"Daily Landskrona Posten published a series of articles about gang violence that attracted a lot of attention last spring. This is an example of how conflicts and differences between ‘Swedes' and ‘immigrants' are emphasized and maintained. In reporting of violence against women with foreign background there is also a tendency of placing our - Swedish and superior - values against a patriarchal and violent culture."
But Gunilla Hultén is optimisitic and claims that the awareness among journalists of how they portray people of foreign background has increased. But she points out that it is important that the discussion of ethnicity is not a topic that comes up only at certain times, but that runs through the editorial conversations at all times. She also demands that the editorial staff leadership assumes responsibility.
"There is a lack of a lively discussion or criticism of how journalism is produced. And I would say that there is often an unwillingness to have these conversations," says Gunilla Hultén.
This is a shortened version of an article first published in 20061205. The Swedish version here.