Denmark is a small country with 5,6 million inhabitants, located in Northern Europe. Together with Sweden and Norway, Denmark is as part of the Scandinavian welfare states with a tradition for public support of both broadcasters and newspapers, strong professional associations for journalists, and a significant share of foundation-owned newspapers. Politically, Denmark is considered a mature liberal democracy.
Freedom House Global Freedom: Status “free” (Score: 97 out of 100 in 2020). Freedom House remarks on Denmark state in the 2019 rapport (2020 rapport coming soon) that:” Denmark is a robust democracy with regular free and fair elections. Citizens enjoy full political rights, the government protects free expression and association, and the judiciary functions independently. However, Denmark has struggled to uphold fundamental freedoms for immigrants and other newcomers.”
V-Dem – Varieties of Democracy
- Liberal Democracy Index 2019: Denmark ranks 7 th, tied with Canada, but down two places since 2018.
- Press freedom index 2020: Denmark ranks third after Norway (1) and Finland (2).
Denmark is a parliamentary democracy and, since 1953, the Danish Parliament has consisted of only one chamber: ‘Folketinget’. Elections to Parliament (Folketinget) are held at least every four years, but it is within the power of the Prime Minister to call elections sooner, if he or she wishes to do so. Elections to the Danish Parliament are based on proportional representation. The Parliament has 179 members, including four elected from Greenland and the Faeroe Islands, which belong to the commonwealth. In 2020 there are ten parties in the Folketing making up two political blocs; the red and blue block. On the left, the red block includes the Social Democrats, The Social Liberals, The Socialist People’s Party, The Red/Green Alliance and the newly formed (2015) The Alternative Party. On the right, the blue block includes The Liberals, The New Liberals (formed 2018), The Conservatives, The Danish People’s Party and Liberal Alliance. The election 2019 saw the Social Democrats enter the government offices with the support of the of all parties in the ‘red bloc’ except The Alternative.
The Danish media landscape has been characterized as a dual media system (Søndergaard and Helles 20XX) with two dominant actors: the two public service broadcasters Denmark’s and TV 2 on the one hand, and the newspapers, most owned by foundations and some in commercial ownership, on the other hand. Data from the Reuters Digital News survey indicates that the reach of the public broadcasters has fallen since the first Reuters survey in 2013, but in 2020 DR and TV 2 still reached the most Danes at a weekly basis. Thus, according to Reuters 2020, offline DR TV and radio reach 59 % of the Danish population, while TV 2 (TV 2 nyhederne and 24-hour news channel TV 2 News) reached 54 %. Both offline and online, the largest Danish newspapers are the two tabloids, BT and Ekstra Bladet, who rank third and fourth in online news reach with the two public broadcasters ranking one (DR) and two (TV 2). The traditional morning newspapers are struggling with a fall in their print editions but are gaining momentum online line with Politiken reaching 14 % of the Danish population online in 2020, but just 6 % offline. Private television in Denmark plays a relatively minor role in in market. Today the private market in Denmark is largely made up by NENT (short for Nordic Entertainment Group). Its TV channels are advertising-funded. Discovery Networks Denmark also plays a big part of the private Tv-market. It owns 11 commercial television channels and streaming services, such as Kanal 5, and Eurosport. Some studies of reach show that the NENT channels reach about 10 % of the viewers whereas Discovery reaches about 5 %.
Leading news media sample 2020
Our media sample for MDM 2020 consists of ten leading news media representing different types of outlets and different types of ownership: Two public service broadcasters (DR & TV 2), and the seven national newspapers: Politiken (centre-left), Berlingske (centre-right), Jyllands-Posten (centre-right), Information (centre-left), Kristeligt Dagblad (centre-right), Børsen (centre right), Ekstra Bladet (centre-left), B.T. (centre-right).
COVID-19 pandemic
From mid-March to mid-May 2020, the Danish Government lead by the Social Democrats imposed a large number of restrictions on liberal freedoms in Denmark, such as closed borders to neighbouring countries, a ban on all public gatherings and events with more than the participants, and the shutting down of many parts of the public sectors. This shut down meant schools and universities closed, but continued online teaching, public transportation were limited and a large part of the staff from both public service broadcasters were also send home by the Ministry of Culture, though this was later admitted to be a breach of the arm’s length principle.
During this shutdown, linear public service television increased their audience share, as did daily newspapers online. However, because of the economic restrictions, advertising slumped between 30 to 50 %, causing revenue losses in advertising-based media and leading to lay-offs in several media companies, amongst then Berlingske that is part of our sample. To prevent further layoffs and even the collapse of media companies the Government has so far give two aid-packages to the private Danish news media, which so far, has prevented closures and mass firing in the media industry. On June 9th, however, Denmark’s second largest media company JyskFynske Medier announced cut-backs due to loss of advertisement revenues under the Covid-19 pandemic that may result in the firing of up to 100 employees.
