The Danish Information Act has traditionally guaranteed widespread access to public information – so-called aktindsigt [access to documents]. It explicitly states the need to guarantee news media’s role in delivering information to the public. Journalists enjoy certain privileges; for instance, public institutions are instructed to quickly react to requests from the media and cannot deny requests based on a lack of resources (Dansk Journalistforbund, 2020). However, only 40 per cent of requests are actually responded to on time (Dahlin, 2016).
However, the Act was revised in 2013 and now includes a number of significant and much-debated restrictions. Among others, correspondence between civil servants and ministers – as well as between ministers and members of parliament – is no longer publicly available (TI-DK, 2020). In this respect, the Danish Information Act now grants fewer rights to access than are in place at the EU level (Jørgensen, 2020). The system is also weakened by a rather ineffective complaints system (Obitsø, 2019).
A number of interviewees named an increasingly restricted access to political decision-makers and the revised Information Act as one of the key challenges for media’s democratic role in Denmark today. A 2020 report of the Freedom of Speech Commission has concluded that the system of access to information is one of the main obstacles to an enlightened public debate in Denmark (Okholm et al., 2020).
