SVT, vikarier och granskningsidealet : Upplever redaktörer att det journalistiska uppdraget äventyras genom kortsiktiga anställningsformer?

The journalistic mission, crucial to a functioning democracy, requires journalists to act as “watchdogs”. By holding people in power accountable, journalists play their part in ensuring that our society is deserving of these lofty democratic standards. What do journalists need to fulfill this role effectively? SVT, Sweden’s major TV broadcast company and one of the country’s biggest news organizations, appears to be increasingly reliant on substitute journalists and short-term employees. This study aims to research how news editors on SVT:s local news stations gauge that the possibility of fulfilling the journalistic ideals of investigation is affected through short-term employment arrangements. SVT is financially funded through a specific tax which entails a certain responsibility on the news distribution they represent. This funding method plays a part in why this study is narrowed down to SVT, as opposed to other media companies. They are also one of the biggest employers of journalists in Sweden, whilst also being one of the country’s most trusted news sources. All in all, a very important institution that’s deserving of further scrutiny. There’s extensive research, both in Sweden and beyond, on the topic of professional journalists. However, we’ve noticed a lack of recent research regarding journalists’ performance and job safety that’s grounded in actual working conditions and terms. Our study indicates that local SVT news stations regularly change substitute journalists in order to circumvent the Employment Protection Act. To find out if these insecure employment forms affect the news stations this study made qualitative interviews with 9 news editors from different local SVT stations all around Sweden. Through a thematic analysis of the interview transcripts we discovered that the increasing use of short-term employees does affect the newsroom’s ability to fulfill their goals, particularly in transition periods when substitute journalists are replaced with new ones. Furthermore, we argue that the ability to fulfill the journalistic ideals of investigation and holding people of power accountable, will be compromised to an even bigger degree if the newsrooms’ share of short-term employees continues to grow.