Ester Pollack

Criticism of the Police in the News. Discourses and Frames in the News Media's Coverage of the Norwegian Bureau for the Investigation of Police Affairs

Abstract Mediated descriptions of reality are tremendously important to the way the public - and policymakers - perceive the police. The present article analyses how leading news outlets reported and commented on complaints against the Norwegian police during the period 2005-2008. The study is based on content analyses of press and television coverage, with special emphasis on a publicly debated police action in which a student of African origins lost his life. In most cases, news coverage of the police and the investigators of the police is event-driven, and the picture of the police seldom points to institutional or organizational problems. The story is too often one about individual wrongdoings alone. Unfortunately, such media pictures matter and influence policy decisions, especially when they become the point of departure for political debate

Journalism as a public good: A Scandinavian perspective

The democratic importance of journalism is related to public good aspects of media products, as well as news media’s positive externalities. Journalism of high quality helps ensure we are all better informed and thus benefits democracy. Lack of investigative journalism may incur large social costs. However, journalism as a public good is difficult to fund on a commercial basis. Historically, an economic solution for media companies has been advertising subsidies, plus different types of public and private support. Today, the long-time marriage between news organisations and advertisers is severely weakened, and nothing so far suggests that digital revenues alone can finance a varied, broad and original news production. In the eyes of capitalist investors, news organisations represent the past, not the future. This article discusses, on the basis of Scandinavian media experiences and recent policy reforms, the necessity of a media policy and a funding system that acknowledges quality journalism as societal knowledge production and a public good.

Disclosure of Scandinavian telecom companies’ corruption in Uzbekistan: The role of investigative journalists:

Transparency International’s yearly Corruption Perceptions Index ranks Scandinavia as one of the least corrupt regions in the world. However, during the past decades, large Scandinavian corporations in the telecommunications, oil and defence industries have – in their struggle for business contracts in other countries – been involved in several large-scale bribery scandals. There has also been a growing range of corruption cases in the Swedish and Norwegian public sectors. In many of these cases, investigative journalists have played a crucial role in the disclosure of corruption, sometimes cooperating across media organisations and countries, demonstrating the importance of journalism as a public good for democracy. In this article, we explore, discuss and analyse the work of and methods used by investigative journalists in revealing large-scale corruption related to the expansion of Nordic telecom companies in Uzbekistan.