Svenska Dagbladet’s mission statement includes an obligation to engage in critical scrutiny of powerholders in society. Sveriges radio states in their 196-pages handbook that their task is to review and investigate different forms of power. These examples show that the watchdog function of the media is present both in written documents and, as previously noted, in the overall rhetoric motivating news gathering. But few observers in Sweden ascribe any decisive force to the mission statements; they are most important during the process of formulation and not particularly important afterwords (Andersson odén, 2001; von Krogh 2008). None of the regional media studied here has editorial policy documents that explicitly mention the watchdog role.
The editor of the Swedish magazine for investigative reporting, interviewed for this project, states that the practical actions in the newsrooms are far more important than – and often not linked to – goals set in mission statements. It is also evident that enterprising and investigative reporting are being performed at many levels in the Swedish media system (more on this in C9).
