Diversity disorders: Ethnicity and newsroom cultures

Abstract

Sweden, as many other European countries, has been engaged in the debate concerning the relationships between social cohesion and the media. The article examines the tension between officially expressed attitudes and diversity goals of Swedish newsrooms and how journalists who have foreign backgrounds perceive these. Despite the intense discussions in recent years concerning media's role in a multi-ethnic context Swedish media organizations have not yet developed an effective means of promoting and implementing diversity in the newsrooms. The interviewed journalists draw attention to the dilemma of not being accepted in majority dominated newsrooms and stress the need to change editorial organization patterns, newsroom cultures and to re-define journalistic missions regarding ethnic diversity. The article concerns the market focus of news production and argues that the present tendency to mainstream cultural diversity in media content may lead to the exclusion of minority voices and thus undermining diversity efforts