The watchdog function of the media is present both in written documents and, as previously noted, in the overall rhetoric motivating newsgathering. Few observers in Sweden ascribe any decisive force to the mission statements. They are most important during the process of formulation, but not particularly important in later stages (von Krogh, 2008). None of the regional media studied here has editorial policy documents that explicitly mention the watchdog role (unchanged over ten years; see von Krogh & Nord, 2011), but all leading national news media in the sample refer to it and exercise it.
Generally speaking, news media tend to focus on audience-oriented news and on providing people with important and interesting news. Such statements may implicitly include investigative journalism and an active watchdog role, but this is not very often explicitly mentioned in mission statements. One could argue that the tradition of highly professionalised journalism in Sweden makes it less natural to specifically highlight in statements what is more or less commonly expected from news media performances.
National interviews with reporters and editors show that rather than a one-way traffic from words in a mission statement to practices in the newsroom, the growing amount of investigative reporting has also been reflected in policy documents under the label of agenda-setting reporting.
