Denmark v America: Media

Yesterday we got a lecture on Danish Media. We looked at trends in print, TV and radio. The obvious decline of newspapers was of concern to the Danes too, but our lecturer pointed out that niche papers are actually doing better than others. He advocated for segmented media, ie, papers only focused on the economy, or religious issues. One such paper is Borsen, which has seen an increase in readership steadily over the past 7 years. Interesting side note, economic news in Denmark is always printed on pink paper.

But many of the similarities between Danish and American Media end there. In Denmark, there are a few major papers who are actually politically active. One such paper, Politiken, actually organized fund raisers to give money to families the Danish government is forcing to leave the country. The current administration is aiming to decrease the number of refugees in Denmark, so families from places like Iran are being asked to leave the country. Politiken launched a campaign against the government, raising money to give to those families so they could continue to live in Denmark. These kinds of involvement in public policy are argued to be "involving readers," but others say Politiken is becoming its own political party.

In TV, as previously mentioned in my post about DR, the state public service stations are actually the most popular stations in Denmark. Though Denmark has made the digital switch, and many channels are offered, those sponsored by DR or TV2 are the most popular stations overwhelmingly. Also, because commercial news is more expensive to produce than syndicated programming, there is very little competition in Denmark.

The Danish constitution provides the following statement in protecting media: "Any person shall be at liberty to publish his ideas in print, in writing and in speech, subject to his being held in responsible court of law." Similar to the first amendment, although there were some problems when TV and radio became popular news forums because the statement says "in print" and although "in speech" is included, there was still debate. Resolved, Danish TV is a lot more liberal than American TV. Both gossip tabloids and television programming are free to show naked people. Ads for prostitutes are also in some tabloids. Stories about pornography and prostitution are acceptable in normal news casts.

Mostly, journalism is facing the same issues across the world. The change to web-based citizen produced journalism is climbing rapidly everywhere. Out lecturer advocated for an approach of embracing the citizen produced content, and having the educated journalists begin to produce a more segmented, investigative, or analytical type of media, and let the uneducated produce the who, what, when, where, why stories. Either way, journalism is changing across the world.