As in most other countries, powerful interests in society, representing political and economic elite groups, generally seem to be over-represented in the news. Systematic content analyses of Swedish news media during recent decades confirm this. Even if the total number of sources seems to have increased, journalists tend to rely on the same sources to a large extent (see Table 4). Politicians, experts, and spokespersons for companies and organisations dominate the news and journalists themselves also appear more frequently as experts commenting on current events, but over time, citizens have been the most frequent source category in regional news (Nygren, 2019).
[supsystic-tables id=43]
This is confirmed by interviews with representatives of leading national media outlets. Editors and journalists are generally sceptical towards public relations material and try to find alternative frames for news stories. The diversity of sources is also positively associated with more resources spent on investigative journalism in both public service and private media.
There are policy documents with guidelines promoting diversity in most newsrooms. However, in daily work and stressful news situations, these principles are not always followed, and easily accessible elite sources are used more frequently. On the other hand, interviews show that concerns over the division between city and countryside have increased over the last years and resulted in editorial initiatives.
