Governing the news : A study of problems and solutions in Swedish public service broadcasting news and policy between 1954 and 2015

Abstract: Swedish public service journalism constitutes a comparatively well-researched subject in Swedish media and journalism studies. Previous studies have, for example, contributed with valuable knowledge about the actors, conflicts, structures and political economy of Swedish public service journalism. It has also presented the scholarly community of media and journalism studies with new research problems and questions to be addressed. One of these relates to how it has been possible to continue the conduct of daily news reporting when tensions between politicians, owners, viewers, staff and management have been ongoing or anticipated.  Another is how it has been possible to change the conduct of daily news reporting when this has been embedded in relatively stable and long-lasting structures.   To grapple with these problems, the conceptual contributions of a discursive turn within media and journalism studies have been operationalized into a study about the conceptualization and performance of roles in Swedish public service broadcasting policy and news relating to political dissent broadcast on the Swedish public service news program Aktuetllt, between 1954 and 2015. The aim is to trace the emergence of metajournalistic discourses about Swedish public service journalism in Swedish public service policy, to study the governmentality of these discourses in relation to other past and contemporary areas of government and to explore their effects on the journalistic discourse of Swedish public service journalism.   The study identifies the conceptualization and performance of three roles that have contributed to problematizing, regulating and/or legitimating the conduct of daily news by Swedish public service journalists. The first one is the independent impartisan, which was performed in news relating to political dissent throughout the entire period. The second one is the cautious (im)partisan, which was performed during only two of the sampled years, namely 1985 and 1995. The third and final one is the transparent impartisan, which was performed during the final sampled years of the investigated period, namely 2005 and 2015.   The study identifies a discursive resemblance between the metajournalistic discourses that have conditioned the problematization, regulation and legitimation of these different roles, and discourses that have been elevated and/or subordinated in the governmentality of other areas of Swedish government during this period. These discourses include the functionalism of early sociology, the multiculturalism of the new social movements of the 1960s and the neoliberalism of late-modern political economy.   The study contributes with a previously less explored conceptual framework on research into Swedish public service journalism. The framework highlights how the structure of the daily news has been legitimated discursively in response to, or anticipation of, tensions between politicians, owners, viewers, staff and management. In addition, it also highlights how the structure of the daily news has been possible to problematize and change discursively in relation to a fluid and constantly outward-looking governmentality.