Published 20 March 2024 at 16.32
Media. SVT's controversial program Klimathoppet showed misleading graphs so that it looked as if the Swedes are more worried about the “climate” than they are. The state television giant is acquitted by the Review Board – but criticized.
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The very first episode of SVT's “Climate Jump” was rejected last fall by the Review Board for to have fiddled with bar charts and thus exaggerate Sweden's bio-related carbon dioxide emissions by as much as 50 million tonnes.
Now it's time again.
An episode of “Climate Jump” from November 2 was about changing your behavior for the climate. In the feature, the presenter presented statistics from the national SOM survey in 2022 about how Swedes think about climate change. In the background, the associated bar chart was shown.
One of the charts showed how the Swedes view the climate issue compared to other social issues and was illustrated with three bars at three different heights. Above the bars were 46, 44 and 9 percent respectively, where 46 percent represented those who thought the climate issue was much more important than other social issues.
The complainant submitted that the bars in one of the bar graphs were highly misleading as the difference between the 46 percent bar and the 44 percent bar was disproportionate to the 9 percent bar. There was also a lack of clarification about why the diagram looked the way it did.
SVT defended itself by saying that the three graphic blocks gave “a simplified” picture of the order of magnitude. According to SVT, the lack of proportionality in the graphic image support was “unfortunate”, but not of such decisive importance that the feature was misleading because the percentages of the results were clearly marked and exposed for a long time in the image.
The board of review states that it looked incorrect such as that the percentage who thought the climate issue was much more important stood out compared to the group who considered the issue to be as important as other social issues.
“Many times the graphic presentation of statistics made in a feature can be at least significant as the numbers mentioned or shown. In this case, the bar for those who consider the climate issue as important as other social issues deviated greatly from a reasonably proportional visualization. This allowed viewers to get a misleading picture of the distribution of opinions. The graphical account thus constituted a shortcoming in relation to the requirement of objectivity. The figures shown in the graphics were nevertheless correct. The board therefore makes the assessment that the shortcoming was not so serious that the feature contravened the requirement of objectivity,” the decision states.
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