<p><p>The purpose of this paper is to study the diversity in Swedish Public Service Radio channel P4. We study the diversity both among the editorial news staff and in the news-broadcasts. We also study the opinions of two news directors of the Swedish Public Service Radio channel P4. The organisation has a national diversity policy that they should follow. We investigate if it is really followed or if it is just a document.</p><p>We use Social Responsibility Theory to explain why media images should represent the actual society and Media Logic to explain the result of our study. We think it is important that media represent the same population as the region which it covers.</p><p>We used a quantitative method to explore the diversity in the news-broadcasts for two weeks (288 broadcasts) listening for people with a foreign background and qualitative interviews to find the opinions of the news directors in Kalmar and Malmö. To study the diversity in the editorial staff we used e-mail and telephone contact with the management on each of the 25 stations nationwide. We define foreign background as someone who the audience might assume as coming from a different country based on accent, pronunciation or name.</p><p>Our results show that nine percent of the editorial news staff on Swedish Public Service Channel P4 has a foreign background by our definition. 53 percent of them are women and 47 percent are men. 60 percent of these journalists are between 26 and 45 years of age. In Kalmar, 8,4 percent of the people who were heard in the news had a foreign background. This is a little higher than the percentage of the population who was born in another country in the region that these news are supposed to cover. In Malmö, 11,1 percent of the people who were heard in the news had a foreign background. This is lower than the percentage in this station’s region. Both news directors agree that the representation of people with foreign background could be better in their news.</p><p>Our conclusions are that the percentage of people with foreign background in the local area that the news is supposed to cover seems to matter very little when it comes to their representation in the news-broadcasts. We discuss different possible reasons for this in the paper.</p></p>

The purpose of this paper is to study the diversity in Swedish Public Service Radio channel P4. We study the diversity both among the editorial news staff and in the news-broadcasts. We also study the opinions of two news directors of the Swedish Public Service Radio channel P4. The organisation has a national diversity policy that they should follow. We investigate if it is really followed or if it is just a document. We use Social Responsibility Theory to explain why media images should represent the actual society and Media Logic to explain the result of our study. We think it is important that media represent the same population as the region which it covers. We used a quantitative method to explore the diversity in the news-broadcasts for two weeks (288 broadcasts) listening for people with a foreign background and qualitative interviews to find the opinions of the news directors in Kalmar and Malmö. To study the diversity in the editorial staff we used e-mail and telephone contact with the management on each of the 25 stations nationwide. We define foreign background as someone who the audience might assume as coming from a different country based on accent, pronunciation or name. Our results show that nine percent of the editorial news staff on Swedish Public Service Channel P4 has a foreign background by our definition. 53 percent of them are women and 47 percent are men. 60 percent of these journalists are between 26 and 45 years of age. In Kalmar, 8,4 percent of the people who were heard in the news had a foreign background. This is a little higher than the percentage of the population who was born in another country in the region that these news are supposed to cover. In Malmö, 11,1 percent of the people who were heard in the news had a foreign background. This is lower than the percentage in this station’s region. Both news directors agree that the representation of people with foreign background could be better in their news. Our conclusions are that the percentage of people with foreign background in the local area that the news is supposed to cover seems to matter very little when it comes to their representation in the news-broadcasts. We discuss different possible reasons for this in the paper.

News directors fill, perhaps, one of the most difficult roles within the drama of the news room. In an environment where objectivity and trust are paramount, and where bias must be kept at an absolute minimum, the news director exists as the arbiter, balancing these journalistic ideals with the necessities for financial survival. This scenario presents a conflict, in which the news director must constantly balance the journalistic obligation to inform the public, with the managerial obligation to generate a profit. In an exploration of this conflict, I interviewed three news directors from KUTV, KSL, and KTVX within the Salt Lake City market, who each face different circumstances, but who each personify the conflict mentioned above. Each of these news directors place the most value on maintaining the quality of their news product, while still remaining conscious of the budget requirements set by corporate ownership. When push comes to shove, however, each news director interviewed for this study was of the opinion that news has to come first, even if it means going over budget. When addressing higher management in these over-budget situations, all three news directors tended to shift their conversation to the long-term perspective, reassuring their managers that costs (as a percentage) would drop over time, and revenues would increase. The sacrifice of news content for the sake of the budget was rare for all three news directors. Competition is seen as a way to better serve the community, long term, through increased revenue. Credibility is the balancing factor, keeping the business interests in check with the journalistic ideals.