Journalistik på olika villkor. En kvalitativ studie om etnicitetens betydelse för journalisters yrkesutövning

Sammanfattning

The purpose of this study is to examine what experiences can be found regarding theimportance of ethnicity in the journalistic professional practices of Swedish journalists with anon-Nordic ethnicity and how that might be expressed. The questions this study aims toanswer are: How do Swedish journalists with a non-Nordic ethnicity in Sweden experiencethat their ethnicity can be of importance for how they are treated at their workplace and howcan that be expressed? How do Swedish journalists with a non-Nordic ethnicity in Swedenexperience that their ethnicity can be of importance for how they are treated when working inthe field and how can that be expressed? How do Swedish journalist with a non-Nordicethnicity in Sweden experience that their ethnicity can be of importance for their workpractice in other ways than described in question 1 and 2?The study is a qualitative interview-study where semi-structured interviews with ninejournalists of a non-Nordic ethnicity from newsrooms around Sweden were completed. Thejournalists answered questions based on themes in an interview guide that were formed withinspiration from earlier studies. The themes are: autonomy, impartiality, informationgathering, discriminating comments, recruitment, and advancement.Based on the theory of structural racism and Critical race theory, as well as earlier studies,the respondents’ answers were analyzed and patterns were identified. We concluded thatSwedish journalists with a non-Nordic ethnicity can experience that their ethnicity is ofimportance in their professional practice. That applies to each theme, where the results showthat journalists of non-Nordic ethnicity can experience that their impartiality is questioned.They can also experience difficulties when requesting information from authorities and beexposed to more discriminatory comments than ethnically Nordic colleagues. We found thata perception regarding that the newsrooms do not work hard enough to increase the ethnicdiversity can be found among journalists, and in cases where newsrooms do work withdiversity it is to create an illusion of inclusivity and diversity, rather than to represent a largerpart of the population.