Political minorities are represented by online (so-called alternative) media. The public broadcasters provide news for minorities with challenges concerning hearing, seeing, and reading.
German is the only officially recognised minority language and population in Denmark, and one newspaper carries news for this group. The German minority in Southern Jutland has its own newspaper, the well-established Nordschleswiger. Moreover, the Danish state heavily subsidises the Danish minority language newspaper Flensborg Avis in Germany. However, there are no (alternative) media organisations for other language minorities (for instance Turkish and Urdu speaking minorities) in the country, and attempts in the past have not been economically viable due to its relatively small market.
Public broadcaster DR no longer produces programmes that target minority groups; there are no private media houses either catering to (unofficial) minority languages, such as Turkish or Urdu. Even though immigration as an issue continues to be in the political and media spotlight, ethnic minority voices are still under-represented in news content (Jørndrup, 2017). Immigrants and their descendants have a substantially lower level of television and print news consumption than the average population (34% consume news several times a day; 9% have not consumed news within the last week), but are more likely than people of Danish origin to get their news through social media (Stenholt Engman, 2019).
The political majorities belonging to the centre-left and centre-right are represented by the printed and online legacy media, while the political minorities belonging to the far left or far right are more present in dedicated online media organisations.Alternative media in Denmark are directed towards political fringe audiences on the right- and left-wing of the political spectrum, as well as catering to news audiences in search of “constructive” or “slow news”; but, that market is still rather limited (Mayerhöffer, in press; Blach-Ørsten & Mayerhöffer, in press).
The public broadcaster DR has an obligation to cater to the minority population of hearing- and sight-impaired individuals and people that have difficulties reading. While the 2017 Media Pluralism Monitor placed Denmark accordingly at low risk when it comes to access to media for people with disabilities, the risk for access for ethnic minorities had been rated at medium to high (Netterstrøm, 2017).
As part of the Danish Commonwealth, Greenland and the Faroe Islands have broadcast and print media in Greenlandic and Faroese. The public broadcasters are funded by the respective governments, and the newspapers are privately-owned. There are no media operating on the Danish mainland that cater to Greenlanders and Faroese based in Denmark.
