Cookie Consent by Free Privacy Policy Generator

Sweden – (C3) Transparency of data on leading news media

Score in short:

Information is easily available online.

Score in detail:

Government inquiries on private and public media are regularly conducted by parliamentary committees, expert groups, and public servants. Their conclusions on media policy and the data they base their conclusions on are published on governmental websites. The latest news media inquiry was completed in 2016 (SOU, 2016b), and the latest public service media inquiry in 2018 (SOU, 2018: 50).

News media ownership information is not very easy to find. The academic research institution Nordicom at the University of Gothenburg publishes regular reports on the media, including the ownership structure, that are available for download. Ownership information is not widely spread among the population. The rapid transformation of the media landscape and the increased ownership concentration in regional media markets in recent years is briefly on the agenda but hardly reported on a more regular basis.

The newspapers in our sample do not print information about their owners in every issue. Their websites, however, contain information on, for instance, owners, circulation, finances, and editorial policies. The public service websites include information on management, financing, and government relations.