SVT is convicted of a hoax about high school Afghans

Published 14 May 2024 at 14.42

Media. SVT is now condemned by the Review Board for having misled its viewers by claiming that 70 percent of high school Afghans were self-sufficient. At the same time, the state television giant is accused of two more left-leaning features.

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It was in “Sverige idag” on January 19 that SVT had a feature about how well things went for the so-called unaccompanied refugee children from Afghanistan.

In the announcement, the newscaster said:

– Now it will be about how things have gone for some of the thousands of unaccompanied children who came to Sweden. About 35,000 sought asylum here in 2015, a record year, and most of them from Afghanistan. And this many, approximately seven out of ten, 70 percent, according to a report from Statistics Norway, have now found work and support themselves.

After that, the news anchor interviewed a reporter about Statistics Norway's (SCB) report and the so-called high school law that made it possible for unaccompanied refugees to stay in Sweden if they finished high school and got a job within six months of graduating.

< p>The feature was reported by a person who emphasized that what SCB's report concluded was that 70 percent of the 35,000 unaccompanied minors who sought asylum in Sweden in 2015 were stated to have found employment, which was the requirement for them to be allowed to stay according to high school law. The report concerned the 20,000 unaccompanied minors who were registered in Sweden in 2022. If you start from the 35,000 who came in 2015, the result is 40 percent and not 70 percent, stated the informant.

Now the Review Board has determined that the feature was contrary to the requirement of objectivity.

“The Review Board considers that in the advertisement it appeared that the employment rate was 70 percent for the entire group of 35,000 unaccompanied children seeking asylum who came to Sweden in 2015. Because Statistics Norway investigated the group of approximately 20,000 unaccompanied minors who were registered in Sweden in 2022, the petition was misleading,” the decision states.

“Appeared mostly as a political position”
At the same time, the board condemns SVT for two other features. On 15 December 2023, “Lokala nyheter Västmanland” broadcast a feature on municipal tax rates where it was said that the tax rates were at a record high due to the current government not releasing more money to municipalities and regions. The review board believes that the simplified statement in the feature was so incomplete that it “came across as a political position”. The board therefore rejects the feature in terms of impartiality and objectivity.

The third rejection dealt, among other things, with India's investment in electric vehicles and was broadcast in Rapport on January 20, 2024. In the feature, there was an incorrect statement that 40 percent of the electricity in India comes from renewable sources. Later, a clarification was sent which, according to the board, did not sufficiently clarify that the information in the original feature was incorrect. The board further stated that a clarification is not a correction. The feature thus goes against the requirement of objectivity.