Published 25 June 2024 at 09.17
Media. Malin Ekman resigns after five years as US correspondent for Svenska Dagbladet. The reason is that she feels pressured to report from a false leftist perspective and omit important information.
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In a “resignation letter” on Substack, Malin Ekman says that already in 2019, when she became SvD's correspondent in New York, she noted how one-sided the established news companies' reporting was.
“The reporting on the USA – in Sweden as well other countries in the West – are incorporated into a ready-made narrative of Donald Trump as the enemy of democracy. Journalists have come to side with one side in the belief that this is 'the right one' and indirectly fight the other. Because the 'other side' is regarded as 'worse', one's own problems are glossed over,” she writes.
This means that information that would normally have been considered relevant is obscured or relegated to the margins.
“Like information about how Democrats are using the justice system as a weapon against Republican opponents. Or how tech companies and parts of the government have colluded to remove politically sensitive content. While unsubstantiated claims about Russian connections to Trump's campaign have generated hundreds of thousands of articles and contributed to deeper news polarization both in the US and in Sweden. The corrections that news media were later forced to issue receive minimal space in the news flow,” writes Malin Ekman.
She states that her own relationship with the readers has remained, but that her relationship with the editors has changed.
“I feel that something will shift in the fall of 2023. My texts look the same as before, but the response will be different. I am told to write through my editor's eyes. The important thing is no longer that the texts are true and factual, but how they 'risk being perceived',” writes Malin Ekman and continues:
“It is natural and desirable to disagree in editorial processes. What I perceive as new is a reluctance to journalistic discussion. Instead, I hear about 'orders from management'. Colleagues talk about 'a new anxiety' in the wake of world events that Russia's invasion of Ukraine and Hamas terror attack in Israel.”
She describes how she unknowingly began to engage in self-censorship, and how this kills her joy at work. She finds herself hesitant to propose reports and analyzes that she “suspects do not fit into the editor's view of what is right and wrong in the United States, who is good and evil”.
“I do it anyway and trembles before the response. When the text is to be revised, every sentence needs to be nailed down, and reservations built in, based on perceptions of who stands to win politically on the text. Reports are worked on over and over and in some cases take months to publish.”
At a meeting with management to discuss this, according to her, untenable work situation, Malin Ekman had it explained to herself that if someone were to count her articles and come to the conclusion that more are critical of the Democrats than the Republicans, SvD would have a hard time “backing her up” public. She was also reprimanded after a reader came forward and accused her of praising Trump.
“Critically examining and reporting on the ruling party used to be considered part of the journalist's raison d'être. Today it is reason for the editors to listen to her,” writes Malin Ekman.
She wonders why the Swedish media have correspondents at all when it has gone just as well to translate week-old articles in established media such as the New York Times, The Atlantic, or the Washington Post.
Malin Ekman states that she has landed in that her current role does not enable the kind of journalism she believes in and that readers deserve.
“This decision has taken time and has not been easy. For a long time I counted myself lucky to be a correspondent, and loved my job. I've been with SvD for over ten years, the last five as a full-time correspondent. And I'll miss you for too long “, she writes.
I am leaving SvD for reasons that I describe in an open resignation letter.
Link here: https://t.co/kkwQwIWhhb pic.twitter.com/IP9li79lWv
— Malin Ekman (@malinekman) June 24, 2024
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