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Iceland – (C9) Watchdog function and financial resources

Score in short:

News media in Iceland lack resources to conduct quality in-depth reporting, and analysis on their daily reporting and investigative reporting is seriously hampered for lack of time and finance.

Score in detail:

Investigations are expensive, and the media outlets are most often run with a loss. There are no official funds to apply for, and only very few journalists work at most of the outlets. Both editors and journalists highlighted the fact that there were little resources available for in-depth or investigative reporting in Iceland. On a daily basis, investigative reporting is mostly based on ad hoc resources. Occasionally, editors ask a particular journalist to look into certain matters, and journalists can ask for time to work on a specific story, but this often means that the journalists end up spending considerable time working on the story in their own time. The Public Broadcasting Service RÚV was most often mentioned as an important exception. Overall, the consensus in the interviews was that there were far too little resources available at the newsrooms of the Icelandic media – and in particular, the private media – to produce quality in-depth and investigative reporting.