Here is a personal view of the way the media in Sweden covered Tuesday's events in the United States. I should warn you that my selection will be somewhat skewed, in that I don't have a TV at home.

The events in the US happened during the afternoon Swedish time. A colleague of mine happened to check the website of Aftonbladet (an "evening" newspaper) and saw the first telegrams of an incredible accident having just happened in New York. He rushed over to the Advanced Media Technology department who have access to satellite television - they were already watching BBC World. They quickly patched this in to our video conferencing system.

A few minutes later I came out of the lab and saw a small crowd of people staring at the smoking view of Manhattan. My errand was forgotten and I joined the others, watching. It was quite clear that the BBC news anchors didn't really know anything and didn't have anything to say, but still had to keep talking, mixing platitudes with various rumours. By this time the newspaper websites were overloaded with requests - one of my acquaintances said he followed the events through the site of Upsala Nya Tidning (smaller local newspaper). During the afternoon, the major newspaper websites handled the issue by simplifying their web sites, removing graphics, etc, to minimise bandwidth requirements.

At one point the local cellphone network became overloaded for some period of time. People started sending email messages to colleagues in the U.S., checking on them.

I went home to prepare food for my children -- on the underground train, in the shop, there was only a single subject of discussion. As I got home, I turned on the radio, expecting that there would be news there. Sveriges Radio channels P1 and P4 did a shared emission until midnight that day with commentary, analysis, statements and news every full hour. Already then it was clear that even while people were extremely upset and saddened by what had happened, many worried that the U.S. would respond by violence, directed at anyone or anything, just to ease the pressure. Even the Prime Minister's statement that evening hinted at such a worry.

[In the edition of Monday, September 17th, Dagens Nyheter had statements from all parliamentary parties that they were worried about escalated violence.]

Already, at this point, there was a feeling that Moslems probably were involved in the attacks. Representatives of Moslem organisations in Sweden outspokenly condemned terror actions such as these (though still pointing out that their brethren in the Middle East and elsewhere were quite used to being at the point of such attacks), and considered those in Palestine who rejoiced at the news as being misguided.

Television commentators later said TV4 (commercial TV channel) handled the reporting best, by completely reordering their schedule and putting in a similar, all-evening commentary program. The public TV channels apparently did not do such a good job of it.

The next day, I think Aftonbladet's news bill [poster] was the best. It simply said: WHO? WHY?

Both evening papers (yes, they do come out in the morning) -- Aftonbladet and Expressen - basically consisted of huge 50-page special editions covering all that was known about the events, and quite a bit of speculation. The morning papers (which also come out in the morning, but are considered to be more sophisticated), Dagens Nyheter and Svenska Dagbladet, also spent most of their news space on the attacks. Both morning papers are liberal (i e, right-wing) papers, though SvD rather more so. (That is, DN is social liberal (though the journalists not uncommonly stand somewhat to the left of the editorial page), whereas SvD used to be conservative but today should rather be classified as neoliberal.) They have in their editorials placed themselves behind president Bush and strongly criticised those who have suggested that it is unfair to be more upset by the, in comparison, considerably fewer that were killed in New York, as opposed to civilians in Iraq, Palestine, etc.

Still, I believe that not even Svenska Dagbladet advocates military force very strongly. (I'd have to read through their editorials a bit more carefully to confirm that, though.)

On Wednesday afternoon, our mail server was overloaded (though it's always been on the margin of adequate performance).

Now a few days later, there are the starts of a bit of debate on the issues, but I think most are still so overwhelmed that they are weighing their words and treading very softly. There have been a few scattered incidents (that have reached the media, at least) of people with Arabic names or appearance having been harassed or even beaten, but so far it seems these have mostly been committed by such that need scant excuse to beat up immigrants anyway...

(A personal comment: I think it is fairly expectable that horrendous events in New York are given larger coverage than similar ones in, say, Sudan, as so many fewer of the media consumers have any ties whatsoever to Khartoum. Note that while there may be quite a few Sudanese people living in Sweden (I have no idea of the actual number), they are in general not consumers of Swedish mass media, but rather of satellite television and newspapers in their own language. Segregation again.)

Kai-Mikael is a graduate student at the Department of Numerical Analysis and Computer Science of the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden.

Back to communications