When Sweden’s most respected current affairs programme accidentally used an AI-generated video to illustrate Trump’s clampdown on immigration, it gave oxygen to those on the right of politics who would like to see public broadcasters cut down to size.
The film, in flagship SVT programme Agenda, purported to illustrate a confrontation between local police in the US and immigration enforcement agents from ICE. The problem: the confrontation had never taken place and the video was entirely fake. There were clues: look closely and the word ‘police’ on the police uniforms was misspelled.
How could this happen? Why wasn’t the source of the video checked?
Bosses blamed the fact that procedures hadn’t been followed. Every media outlet makes mistakes, of course, but for a well-financed organization for which credibility is everything, this was deeply embarrassing. Given that some right-wingers already think SVT and its sister organization Sveriges Radio are crypto-leftists, it makes for a difficult debate.
This was just the latest in a series of episodes that critics of the public service broadcasters say prove that these organizations are biased, have too much money, and serve a metropolitan clique divorced from the interests of ordinary Swedes. They also point to an edit of the Donald Trump speech that was superficially similar to the one that got the BBC into trouble last month. There were also significant differences, not least that SVT’s was in a trailer, not a documentary, and SVT immediately rectified the error, unlike the BBC, which procrastinated and deflected.
The appearance of SVT’s CEO Anne Lagecrantz’s husband, David Lagercrantz, in an SVT travel programme has also provoked ire. The case for the defence: that David Lagercrantz is a high-profile figure in his own right (he’s internationally famous for writing the sequels to Stig Larsson’s Millennium books) and that Anne Lagercrantz insists she has no influence over which guests get invited onto SVT's shows.
The AI video and Lagercrantz’s travel programme were manna from heaven for the Sweden Democrats, who wanted to call Anne Lagercrantz to testify to the Riksdag’s Culture Committee. This was viewed by SVT as an assault on editorial independence: if politicians can call media bosses to account for editorial decisions like these, where does it stop? After all, the media’s job is to hold politicians to account if journalists are afraid of being summoned before parliament for their editorial decisions, that independence is threatened.
Some of the right-wing anger against SVT over these incidents is undoubtedly genuine. Sometimes it is no doubt justified. But the parties on the right – particularly the Sweden Democrats – also increasingly see SVT-bashing as something that benefits them politically.
A new media project started by permanently outraged right-wing YouTuber Henrik Jönsson is a case in point: when he launched his new channel 100 Procent he asked donors for a “voluntary public service fee”, pointedly mocking the compulsory public service fee all Swedes pay via their taxes for SVT and SR.
Jönsson’s videos frequently target SVT too – as too pro-immigration, too blasé about gang crime, too anti-Sweden Democrat. Some (including SVT’s own journalists) have accused him of selectively clipping SVT’s programmes to prove his point, but his views seem to be shared in part at least by many on the right.
Another right-leaning media project with an SVT-obsession is news site Kvartal, which first revealed the channel’s dodgy Trump edit.
The reason for this obsession might be found in right-wing voters’ views of the broadcasters. Trust surveys show that trust among right-wing voters is much lower than among left-wing voters. Sweden Democrat voters have the lowest trust of all. And while the broadcasters strive to be impartial, it might sometimes be true that the liberal assumptions of the university-educated, city-dwelling journalists and producers are reflected in output.
Yet these parties might have good reason to tread carefully. For while their core voters might not be super-keen on SVT and Sveriges Radio, overall support for public service broadcasters remains astonishingly high. Indeed, they are by some margin Sweden’s most trusted media brands – 62 percent have confidence in SVT, and 67 percent for SR, compared to 46 percent for local newspapers or 44 percent for Dagens Nyheter. Indeed, SR’s score is only slightly lower than the 69 percent accorded to Säpo, Sweden’s security police and most trusted institution.
So while these political attacks on the broadcasters present a difficult balancing act for institutions that need to appeal to the whole country, they also risk backfiring on SVT and SR’s detractors.
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