Category: Media & Journalism

Göran Persson, I want my 10 800 kronor

I seldom discuss politics on this blog, but today I feel compelled to do so. The benefits for Swedish parents that choose to stay home on maternity or paternity leave are among the best in the world. We are guaranteed compensation of 80 percent of our salary up to a certain level for 390 days, to be shared between the father and the mother. That’s all very well. Now, on top of that, parents also get 90 days, called “garantidagar” (guarantee days), with a compensation of 60 kronor per day, so basically most Swedes (compensation depends on your salary) that give birth to a baby have a strong financial support from the system.

Now, the Swedish Government has suggested that the compensation during these 90 days shall be increased from 60 kronor to 180 kronor, but that will only apply for children born on 1 July 2006 or later. This means that the parents of a child born on the evening of 30 June will miss out on compensation of 10,800 kronor, about 1,150 euro.

The social democrats explain this choice:
– It would simply be too expensive to let this increase apply to everyone on parental leave. There is a risk that all parents would use their guarantee days even if they don’t really need it, says press secretary Anna Karin Wallberg.

Read that again, slowly. There is a risk that parents will exercise their rights, even if they don’t need it!

What a brilliant logic. But of course, this is not the entire story. In fact, the government saves about 600-700 million kronor per year because parents don’t use all their days in the parent’s insurance. Guarantee days make up between 50 and 100 million a year, according to RFV.

In the article from Dagens Nyheter it says that parents with children under 8 years old, have 30 million guarantee days saved. But don’t be fooled here, that’s the total figure. According to a report (pdf) by RFV in 2002, between 85 and 92 percent of all guarantee days get used up, so the argument that people will use 30 million guarantee days “they don’t need” is not valid. More than 9 out of 10 days are used by ordinary parents, just like the lucky ones who get babies after 1 July 2006.

That means that if 90 percent of all guarantee days would be used anyway, the only additional cost for the remaining 10 percent (3 million days) would be 540 million kronor (180 million + 360 million for the increase to 180 kr/day). I think that is a low cost for doing the right thing and not discriminate parents of children being born before 1 July.

(By now I figure you’ve guessed that me and my wife are having a baby in May this year.)

Trackbacks to press releases

I think the way that PRweb allow bloggers to send trackback pings to their press releases is really neat. PRweb also allow readers a palette of other options, such as submitting the press release to Digg. It makes Swedish press release services like Waymaker and Newsdesk feel very old fashioned.

Oh, and by the way, congratulations to PR blogging pioneer Constantin Basturea on his new job.

Power is not influence – DN gets it wrong, again

I wasn’t going to comment on the Swedish study about antisemitism that was published in Dagens Nyheter on 14 March, but when DN for the second time publishes an incorrect phrase I think it’s worth speaking up. The study (pdf, 3MB) has been the subject of much debate since it was published and it made conclusions like “one out of four Swedes don’t want a jewish Swedish Prime Minister”. About 3,000 Swedes were asked a series of negative statements against jews in order to see how antisemitism is spread in Sweden. But I noticed that there was a slight difference between one of these questions in the survey and how that question was reported in the press. It may seem insignificant, but trust is in the details.

In the survey, respondents were asked whether they agreed or not with the following statement.

“Jews have too much influence in the world today”
“Judarna har för mycket inflytande i världen idag”

In the first article in DN, this question had now been changed to:

“Jews have too much power in the world today”
“Judarna har för stor makt i världen i dag”

But “power” is not the same as “influence”.

The same incorrect phrase was used this morning by Mats Bergstrand in DN. I would argue that the second statement sounds “worse” than the first, and in my view it is a careless (and hopefully not deliberate) use of information. Not reporting correctly opens a survey up for critisism, and like in this case, doesn’t help the important fight against antisemitism.

Footnote: the question can be found on page 125 in the report.

Citizen journalism no hit with the journalist union

The Swedish Union of Journalists (SJF) calls Metro’s editor-in-chief Sakari Pitkänen the “grave-digger of journalism” after initiating a project involving citizen journalists in areas in the Stockholm region that today are not covered by daily news media. SJF says about the project:

“It’s an insult not only to journalism, but also to readers/citizens.”

The Swedish Union of Journalists has about 18,000 members, a figure already surpassed by the number of Swedish bloggers. Let’s face it, like SJF say, journalism is a profession, but journalists are not the only ones that should be allowed to comment on different topics. What’s so wrong with involving citizens in the public debate, as bloggers, readers or “citizen reporters”?

“It’s about collecting and supplying relevant information that the ordinary citizen don’t have time and resources to sort out.”

Sure, but I think today’s media consumers are able to distinguish the difference between information on an unknown website, a semi-professional blog, and a news article by a well know journalist. And, value it accordingly.

Sakari Pitkänen responds to accusations that he is devaluing the journalist profession:

“If there was something to devalue, then that’s what I would be doing. But there’s not. There is no journalism out there today.”

State of the News Media 2006

The report State of the News Media 2006 is out and it identifies six major trends:

– The new paradox of journalism is more outlets covering fewer stories.

– The species of newspaper that may be most threatened is the big-city metro paper that came to dominate in the latter part of the 20th century.

– At many old-media companies, though not all, the decades-long battle at the top between idealists and accountants is now over.

– That said, traditional media do appear to be moving toward technological innovation — finally.

– The new challengers to the old media, the aggregators, are also playing with limited time.

– The central economic question in journalism continues to be how long it will take online journalism to become a major economic engine, and if it will ever be as big as print or television.