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Swedish state television has announced that it is being forced to close programs. There is a lack of financial resources, and the government seems uninterested in injecting more money.
Sveriges Television’s CEO Anne Lagercrantz says on the company’s website: “- We are being forced to lay off journalists and employees throughout the country. We are pausing and remaking appreciated programs. It hurts. When we make cuts, we have at the same time chosen to protect independent scrutiny and verification, presence throughout the country, stories about and for Sweden – and content that brings many together, across generational boundaries”.
Since 2022, Sweden has been governed by a right-wing government. It is well known that right-wing voters throughout the Western world have less trust in traditional media in general and in public service in particular than left-wing voters do.
In Sweden, this is confirmed every time the so-called “Media Academy” measures Swedes’ trust in, among other things, public service. They then take the opportunity to measure trust based on party sympathies. Here it becomes clear that all voters to the right of the political center have lower trust in public service. And the further to the right they place themselves on the political scale, the lower the trust.
That is why many Swedish right-wing voters were disappointed when the new right-wing government and its support party, the Sweden Democrats, entered into a new broadcasting agreement with the state-owned radio and TV. The agreement means that Sweden will continue to have a strong public service even if the appropriations are not written down or adjusted for inflation.
And this is exactly what is happening now. Public service spending has increased, partly because of inflation, and the companies then need larger appropriations than planned. But so far, the government and the Sweden Democrats say no. And then the state-owned television company will have to start cutting back on operations.
The fundamental reason why right-wing politicians want to reduce appropriations for public service is the leftward shift that many believe characterizes Swedish public service.
The heads of public service usually deny that there is a left-wing influence on the content. They do this, among other things, by usually referring to research that says there is no left-wing bias. They also usually point out that right-wing voters have lower trust in social institutions in general and not just in public service. At the same time, they naturally say that they take the criticism seriously and that they do not deny that right-wing voters at least have a feeling that tax-financed radio and TV are better at reflecting the worldview of left-wing voters than right-wing voters.
In the overall right-wing majority that is now cutting back on resources for public service, it is above all the Sweden Democrats that take a critical stance towards public service. The other parties are more hesitant. It is not that the Sweden Democrats have an official stance that public service should disappear, even though many of their voters might be happy to see it. Under party leader Jimmie Åkesson – who has been party leader for over 20 years – the party has come to a position that public service should be reduced and that higher demands on impartiality should also be made.
But the traditional liberal-conservative right-wing parties in government are resisting. Probably because they are afraid of the debate that has existed in Sweden for many years according to which changing public service is a threat to democracy. As soon as any Sweden Democrat begins to criticize public service, politicians on the left and opinion leaders with left-wing sympathies have described this as a threat to independent journalism. They say that politicians should not interfere in public service work, that investigative journalism should be independent in relation to politics.
From the Sweden Democrat side, it has been emphasized that the media should of course not be controlled by the government, but that it is also a fact that the ultimate clients of public service are the Swedish people. So, who should correct and criticize public service if not the politicians who represent the Swedish people?
The debate has been going on for several decades, but now, for the first time, ideologically motivated cuts in the resources of state radio and TV are taking place in Sweden. The reason for this is simply that so many Swedes find it unreasonable to have to pay taxes for a public service that claims to be impartial, but which is not.