Denmark’s only national news agency, Ritzau, remains an important source across all Danish news media platforms. Ritzau is owned by eleven Danish news media, including Danmarks Radio, and has been found to be widely quoted as a source in online news sites (Lund et al., 2009; Blach-Ørsten et al., 2013). From 2012 to 2015, Berlingske News Agency existed as a rival to Ritzau; however, in the end, the small Danish media market could not sustain two national news agencies. According to interviewees,[i] Ritzau still plays a role in day-to-day reporting, but mostly online. For print editions, the national newspapers focus on their own original content.
Regarding the use of public relations (PR), journalists usually state that it has little or no influence on their work, while research often suggests otherwise. Kristensen (2004) argues that journalists and professional sources, including PR agencies, increasingly have become dependent on one another, while Wedel (2016), based on interviews of actors in the PR-industry, shows that news media is fundamental to PR work, and that selling stories, especially exclusives, to news media is a common and successful PR-practice.
Content exchange with partners and other media is still the exception, except with bigger international stories, such as the Panama Papers. In these instances, different news media – usually one of the public service broadcasters and one of the eight national newspapers – team up to do the coverage together. But news media also quote each other’s stories, especially online (Blach-Ørsten et al., 2013), to an extent that news media – from time to time – accuse each other of over-quoting. This led to new guidelines for quoting by the interested organisation “Danske Medier” (Danish Media’s Employer Organisation) that were passed in late 2014.
Sources in Danish news media have in several studies been found to be mostly elite and male, but more female sources have been appearing in recent years (Willig et al., 2015). Minorities, however, are still not widely represented in the news (Jørndrup, 2017).
- We conducted ten interviews with reporters and editors between February and March 2020, with additional interviews conducted in June 2020. We interviewed both current and former employees working in the leading Danish news media as well as two of the most important interest organisations: The Danish Union of Journalists and The Danish Media Association.
