New times require a new media culture

Most people probably agree on this. I also think that most people agree that in the last ten or twenty years we have seen a widespread deterioration in the formation of intellectually advanced opinions.

When I began working as a critic at Svenska Dagbladet in the early 1990s, there were still freelance contracts, which meant that at least some of the paper’s critics could make a fairly good living doing what they did. A successful critic earned around SEK 12,000–15,000, which was roughly half the income of an editor of a cultural review section.

The cultural review sections in turn all had different images in terms of their ideological, aesthetic, philosophical and scientific bent. As a whole, this meant that journalists, generally speaking, had a relative secure base, which was a condition required in order to criticise dominant currents, question time-bound trends and temporary truths. This created a relatively vigorous climate for debate, where representatives of various ideologies, traditions of thought and aesthetic approaches were constantly at loggerheads.

Today, twenty years later, few freelancing critics earn SEK 12,000–15,000 for their work in the morning papers, while the salaries of editors of cultural review sections have risen several times over. These critics rarely, as before, have regular incomes from their papers but rely instead on doing as many side jobs as possible, like moderating debates, writing in different magazines and editing anthologies. Over the long term, this trend has generated a culture of fear and fitting in, where few if any dare to go against the currents and trends, where few question and critically examine the structures of power in the industry they are assigned to cover.

In order to justify their readiness to fit in, however, people ridicule and criticise the opposite attitude. A critic who questions distinguished contributions to contemporary science, aesthetics and philosophy thus runs a great risk of being characterised as a “culture hater”, “reactionary”, “right-wing crazy” and so on.

Yet the strange thing is that the very kind of journalist who uses a term like “culture hater” most diligently with the intent of squashing debate has been very diligent in recent times in claiming that it is a threat to democracy, for instance, when Dagens Nyheter has been forced to make a large number of cultural writers and editors redundant. It may sound cynical, but it should nonetheless be stressed that democracy does not depend on profound writers as such, but rather that the important thing is actually how these writers and editors view their work: whether it consists of excluding dissenting voices or allowing those with contrary opinions to have their say.

Anyone who really is interested in creating a media culture that can promote democracy cannot be satisfied with sweeping regrets about how newspapers that are losing millions are forced to cut back on their services – especially when the editors who disappear are precisely the ones who were most persistent in striving for ideological and aesthetic homogeneity. No, anyone who wants greater pluralism in opinions realises of course that the problems are much more complicated and multifaceted.

In particular, this involves countering the tendencies to fit in described above. And on this very question, I believe that in the long run the only reasonable alternative, for anyone who is serious about wanting to uphold a journalism in the service of democracy and the general public, is foundation-funded journalism of exactly the kind that Axess offers.

A certain kind of economically viable journalism can be financed through journalistic foundations. As is already the case in the US, with Pro Publica for example, one can imagine a kind of pool that allows journalists to remain ideologically free relative to the different dominant coteries of the day, and where one moreover has the opportunity to explore various intellectual activities at length that are both relevant to and critical of contemporary society.

Where there would thus be an opportunity to devote an investigative and far-reaching critique that does not turn its back on the contemporary world and is merely pedantry for pedantry’s sake, but neither one that sees it as its task to accept and enthusiastically present every new intellectual and cultural trend. I think it reasonable that even the State can be behind such foundations, but at the same time it is vital that such a system allows space for a number of different participants who are independent of one another. That is because in the long term it is the only way pluralism – and thus democracy – can be guaranteed.