There are many reasons for the democratic deficit that Sweden has suffered. One important reason is citizens' lack of fact-based and unbiased news information. As a result, voters do not have sufficient knowledge to make their own informed decisions, which is fundamental to a functioning democracy.
One important actor from which citizens obtain information and knowledge is SVT. SVT's mission is to be objective and impartial, but it is now a well-known fact that a large majority of SVT employees have left-wing political views and that this affects their choice of and approach to presenting news and highlighting social issues, which also affects a large part of the other programmes on offer.
There are also individual employees at SVT who have explained what forms this bias at SVT can take. One well-known example is the former programme host Janne Josefsson, who said that when he suggested that the other side of a social issue should also be allowed to speak in order to shed more light on it, his colleagues replied, "Yes, but then we let our political opponents speak, and that doesn't help our cause.
This lack of impartiality leads, among other things, to a growing number of citizens who stop watching SVT and want it to be cancelled, and instead seek information and knowledge from other sources, such as alternative media.
The same critics of SVT also find it outrageous that they should be forced to pay via taxes for SVT/SR's activities, which they also consider to have contributed greatly to the serious problems Sweden now has, and they also find it unreasonable that they should be forced to pay for an SVT/SR that they see as a political opponent engaged in political activism and indoctrination, which is considered to take place in a number of widely differing types of programme.
There are others who are very critical of SVT, but who still want to keep its activities, provided that they are radically changed to become more impartial and that the activities are also cut back, thereby reducing the tax money allocated to them.
Criticism of SVT/SR's bias has been around for many years and has increased in recent years. That this is the case is also evident from all those who, on alternative media, express opinions and demands that SVT should be closed down or that its operations should be greatly changed and downsized. During these years, various governments have come and gone, but no or very little changes have been made to SVT's activities, while its political bias has remained.
The need to change SVT and its lack of impartiality and objectivity is now obvious. One way of doing this is to divide the organisation into two channels, one with an explicit left-wing profile and the other with a right-wing profile. The management and staff of each channel are recruited in such a way as to ensure the two distinct channel profiles.
In this way, citizens will know in advance that when they watch each channel, the facts and perspectives in them may have different starting points and be presented in partly different ways, thus giving them a better opportunity to draw their own conclusions about what the reality is and what should be done.
Certain types of ”non-political” programmes, such as major sporting events, could still be shown in cooperation between the two channels.
However, it is not a given that each channel will present news and other facts in an obviously incomplete, inaccurate and biased way, based on a particular political agenda, rather the opposite, as the competition between the two channels is likely to lead to both being keen to present news and social issues in a factual and more multifaceted way, otherwise they risk losing the trust of viewers and thus their ratings will drop.
This division into two channels with different profiles would also provide an opportunity for innovation and competition in terms of new forms of programming and opportunities to allow others than those who for many years have been allowed almost exclusive rights by SVT to express themselves on various social issues. Political dialogue, social debate and ultimately democracy would benefit greatly from this.
The alternative to the above could be to make SVT more impartial through the appointment of board members and new recruitment methods/channels of employees. However, this would be a more complex and uncertain process than dividing the channels into left and right channels, thereby creating competition for viewers. This would ensure that the quality of the programmes is as good as possible, but also that completely new forms of programming are created.
Elsa Widding