Interviewees describe a strong, but informal democratic culture in newsrooms that grants individual journalists veto rights, flat hierarchies, and participation in decision-making processes. Danish newsrooms do not have newsroom councils.
The Danish Media Liability Act of 1991 states that “the content and conduct of the media shall be in accordance with sound press ethics” (Pressenævnet, 2013: para. 1). The code of press ethics is written down in the “Advisory rules of sound press ethics”, last revised in 2013 (Pressenævnet, 2013). The Code of Ethics is further supervised by the Danish Press Council.
Besides the advisoryrules, a 2015 study of media ethics in Denmark documented that most major news organisations either had published or were preparing to publish their own ethical guidelines online (Blach-Ørsten et al., 2015). In general, all media guidelines favour balanced and fair reporting, ideals that journalists themselves also mention in interviews. However, only a few of these guidelines focus on internal newsroom democracy. The rules that do address these issues are rather vague, such as stating that journalists should not be asked to perform tasks that go against the advisory rules or be asked to perform a task that goes against his or her principles. Neither of these guidelines has ever been tested in the Danish Press Council.
With regard to influence on hiring an editor-in-chief, most of our respondents say that editors are hired or appointed without the participation of the regular journalistic staff. For public service outlets DR and TV 2, the board – including one member representing staff – is part of the hiring process when it comes to hiring at the top executive level.
To our and our interviewees’ knowledge, there are no Danish news media who have internal rules to support and promote female journalists’ careers or women’s access to managerial positions, and we do not know of any formal systems of monitoring and evaluating the presence and participation of women in decision-making at all levels.
