In the United States, Fox News is generally recognized as a counterweight against the left-leaning media. With conservative profiles like Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity, viewers are offered a very different view from, say MSNBC or CNN. For better or for worse, multiple viewpoints enables the regular voter to listen in to both sides and make his or her own decision.
In Sweden, enabling viewers to hear both sides is apparently deemed undemocratic.
As Right-leaning news site Fria Tider reports, Fox attempted to introduce Fox News and it’s international news years ago on Swedish channel TV8. Leftists swiftly responded by filing claims against the channel based on an obscure paragraph in the radio/TV code (chapter 5; paragraph 1) stating that all content has to depict absolute equality amongst all people. With it’s perverse letftist interpretation, this includes the communist notion of everyone’s given right to enjoy the exact same standard of living. The leftists won, and since Fox News was found to not promote this bizarre stance, it was swiftly taken off the air.
Now Fox is back, but only providing airheaded entertainment. News and analysis is still the exclusive domain of Swedish so-called “public service” TV and radio. Everyone who owns a TV, radio, or anything able to view Swedish state television or radio channels, is by law required to pay 2076 SEK per year (about $290) for the privilege of viewing or listening to heavily left-slanted news stories in TV and radio.
By their own admission, some 80% of the Swedish state television news reporters vote for extreme leftist parties. The new boss of Swedish state television is Hanna Stjärne, famous for granting a “journalism award” to an outlaw group of leftist extremists for illegally hacking conservative chat forums, using a dummy corporation to extract credit reports, and providing personal information to leftist newspapers in an effort to “shame” conservatives into submission and silence.
While I may find profiles like Bill O’Reilly a bit over the top myself, I certainly think he has a right to make his voice heard. But when only the leftist equivalent is allowed to speak, and the counterweight opinion being deemed illegal, the whole concept of democracy is jeopardized. And Sweden is on very, very thin ice.
Is it any wonder that neighboring country Denmark had to start radio broadcasts for Swedish listeners per the old Voice of America concept this year? Really. The Voice of Denmark ran a series of highly acclaimed broadcasts about taboo subjects like freedom of speech, immigration, censorship and general liberty during the summer of 2014 for the people in southern Sweden.
The West used these broadcasts for lifting the spirits of the enslaved masses in the East until the fall of the Berlin wall 25 years ago. Today, the West again has to broadcast it … Only this time, it’s to the West enclaves sliding into antiquated East-bloc situations. Yet noone can produce a coherent reason WHY this bizarre slide into censorship and oppression is taking place.
THE SWEDEN REPORT 
Get out of Sweden now while you’re still sane and your liver functions. America is the only decent place in the world for an American to live. I figured this out the hard way. Take my advice and you won’t have to.
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“Yet no one can produce a coherent reason WHY this bizarre slide into censorship and oppression is taking place.”
Long ago America’s Founders gave the reason for civilization’s degeneration, turning it’s back on the God to Whom they owe its foundation. Sweden once had a genuine church very different from the satanist whorehouse it’s largely become, and satan is infamous for opposing all God’s gifts, including decency and freedom, hence the infamous delusional Scandinavian depravity pretending to be “freedom,” God save us.
Read C.S. Lewis’s wonderful Perelandra Trilogy as a great illustration of this. Soli Deo gloria.
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What a sad commentary on the land that produced Gustavus Adolphus Rex, whose victory at Breitenfeld led (I am given to believe, but can’t corroborate) to a plaque being erected in his honor proclaiming ‘freedom of belief for all the world’.
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I agree that the interpretation of why Fox News was not given the right to broadcast is bizarre, but if you can read Swedish you find that what is stated in the article about “…right to enjoy the exact same standard of living” is not true. It is about having equal rights.
What is stated in the law,. “programverksamheten som helhet präglas av det demokratiska statsskickets grundidéer och principen om alla människors lika värde och den enskilda människans frihet och värdighet” means that the programmes should be based on fundamental democratic principles about peoples equal value and the individuals freedom and dignity.
This should by no means be a problem for a conservative news channel, on the contrary. “Fria tider” is not necessarily a reliable source in these matters, Why it was turned down seems very strange though. The law does NOT state that you have to be left leaning to be allowed to broadcast.
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Fair enough Mentat, but it is the application of the law that really matters. And the net effect is that Fox News was forced to shut down, and the extreme leftists retain their monopoly on news broadcasts.
It’s the same as another article in Fria Tider today about how right-leaning journalists are about to get the journalism credentials revoked. Nice headline.
But when you read the source (http://www.journalisten.se/nyheter/kampen-mot-otrygghet-i-fokus-pa-kongressen) the focus is on the alternate media websites (“hate sites” in Swedish newspeak). So the source really talks about less draconian measures than the headline would suggest.
However, since every physical newspaper in Sweden falls under the leftist spectrum, anyone not cheering in the leftist crowd simply won’t be working as a journalist at a regular paper. Even supposed right-leaning papers like Svenska Dagbladet are heavily left-biased. Thus, anyone this suggested restriction would be applied to, would naturally be working for alternative media i.e. conservative websites.
So again, the relevant question to ask is: what does this mean in the real world? The law said one thing, but it was twisted into forcing Fox News out. The new journalist guild rules say one thing, but it will be used in such a way that it is only applied to silence and discredit anyone daring to write criticism about the Swedish socialist experiment. And isn’t the end result really what matters?
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[…] The new clause is worded exactly like those of other unions, where anyone found to be an SD-supporter is immediately excluded, and the same wording that was used to ban Fox News. […]
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I lived in Germany for a few years.
I think Europeans find comments like “The West used these broadcasts for lifting the spirits of the enslaved masses in the East until the fall of the Berlin wall 25 years ago” sort of far-out and over-the-top.
People in East Germany were spied upon more, but that isn’t the same as being “enslaved” and literally being forced to work without pay. They weren’t forced to do work without pay. In fact, they were guaranteed a job.
I’m sure there are some Europeans who would gladly point to U.S. history to show you what slavery really was.
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I’m British and not really, the DDR was a horrific police state. They shot people who tried to leave; that says it all about what a lovely paradise it was, that so many risked death to leave it.
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Are you suggesting Europe didn’t have slavery?. Remind me again which side people tried escaping from in Germany?.
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@reasonablyliberal
A small minority was enslaved here. In the DDR a whole country was.
It’s excessive to say “enslaved” as you say but only mildly so in my view. It strikes me as strange to bring up that people in the DDR were guaranteed a job as though the “pay” is a meaningful distinction between living as a citizen of the DDR and as a slave in the U.S. Highly educated people were grossly underpaid; all were paid pittances; and one had limited choices of what to do. I can only imagine the kinds of “jobs” offered and where.
Citizens were spied on, subject to arbitrary arrest, and coerced into dirty surveillance of others. You could be shot trying to escape and, if one movie is to be believed, subject to humiliating body cavity searches by swinish police officers.
Citizens may have had a “job” but that did not hide the fact that one had local party masters whose whims were always available to humiliate any independent spirits.
Forgive me if I am overly frank, and I mean no insult, but your attitude seems servile in view of the fact that the DDR was a Stalinist state through and through whose excesses simply cannot be glossed over with the argument that employment was guaranteed.
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I would imagine young Negro slaves were subject to body cavity searches before they were separated from their parent and sold down the river back in the old days.
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