There is no country in the Western part of the world where the state is more present than in Norway. The state accounts for around 60 % of GDP. The state owns 3/5 of the values on the Oslo Stock Exchange. Fully 1/3 of the total workforce in Norway is employed in the public sector.
The all-pervasive state exercises enormous influence over our lives. It has a monopoly on violence (the military and the police), on right and wrong (the courts) and on taxing and redistributing tax revenues.
The state manages the workforce, the natural resources, the societal infrastructure, the Oil Fund and our common financial wealth. And it steers a large part of opinion formation in society through the state broadcaster NRK, and the press through the press subsidy.
We have elected politicians to govern the state’s many power monopolies. Formally speaking they have only been lent the power. They administer it temporarily and on our behalf. That implies a delegation of trust, and great responsibility. If they break the trust and are not conscious of their responsibility, they should be able to be sacked.
But that is not how it is in Norway. The politicians are only seemingly popularly elected. In Norway there have developed network parties controlled by professional politicians, who through tight social networks and one of the most closed nomination systems in Europe, in reality nominate and re-elect themselves.
They do not take responsibility. And they are seldom held to account. They do more or less as they please. They promise one thing in the election campaign, and do something quite different when they come to power. In a multi-party system with coalition governments they compromise away most of their most important election pledges. And they get away with it, for they obscure, distort, conceal and lie.
For that they use the state and institutions such as Statistics Norway (SSB), the Norwegian Directorate for Children, Youth and Family Affairs (Bufdir), the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation and others, as well as the state-supported press and the ever-growing host of information and communication advisers in the ministries, directorates and state enterprises.
It generates a massive influence pressure. It is readily mobilised in controversial matters where the distance between the political elite and the grass roots is particularly great, as when it concerns the rights of minorities, climate and the green shift, the relationship to the EU, energy policy, preparedness and the state of the Armed Forces, and not least when it concerns the non-Western Muslim immigration.
It struck me during NRK’s coverage of the football World Cup. There were so conspicuously many obviously successful and well-integrated non-Western second-generation immigrants who were drawn forward both in front of and behind the camera, that it could hardly be coincidental. All in Norwegian national team colours. All enthusiastically cheering for Norway. It was a narrative of unity and colourful community that was to be told. But the patriotism seemed false and stuck on. The whole appeared contrived, planned and well-directed.
It was obviously not coincidental. These were broadcasts with an agenda. Here the multicultural immigration narrative and the myth of the successful and well-integrated immigrant were to be promoted. The football World Cup and the enthusiasm and patriotism that the Norwegian national team produced were used for what they were worth. An attempt was made to turn it from something that is perceived as dangerous and threatening nationalism and patriotism, to multiculturalism and ‘inclusive community’. It was so thoroughly carried through that it had to be planned.
So I set myself the task of examining NRK a little more closely in the seams, whether it really is the case that the state-supported NRK, which we are all forced to finance, really has formalised strategies, concrete plans and an acknowledged agenda for promoting a cause that large parts of the Norwegian population are critical of. That is in that case in conflict with the NRK Charter and the democratic guidelines for NRK, as an impartial public broadcaster and news mediator.
For NRK shall, in accordance with § 13 of NRK’s articles of association ‘safeguard freedom of expression and conditions of expression for the citizens, be editorially independent, balanced over time, promote the public conversation and contribute to the whole population receiving sufficient information to participate actively in democratic processes’. And there are good reasons for that, for sufficient, factual and fact-based information is necessary for the voters to be able to make informed choices. It is necessary for democracy to be able to function at all.
Censorship, disinformation, covering up of factual circumstances, propaganda and manipulation of information and facts in order to promote a particular cause, ideology or agenda, is not factual, balanced and fact-based information. False information and news mediation undermines democracy. That is how totalitarian regimes operate in order to retain power.
That was what the Germans were engaged in during the war. That was what Deutscher Fernsehfunk (DFF) was engaged in in communist East Germany during the Cold War. And it is the same that NRK is engaged in today among other things in the field of immigration. That emerged when I began to dig into NRK’s internal procedures and guidelines.
It is something one may have suspected. NRK in fact has clear internal guidelines and strategies for promoting the multicultural immigration narrative, especially the non-Western immigration, in the same way as SSB and Bufdir and others.
NRK has an extensive framework for diversity work, appointments, linguistic guidelines and editorial priorities that affect how the theme is to be treated. It is not surprising, but nonetheless sensational, for this is propaganda and not popular enlightenment. It is a particular narrative that is to be told and mediated.
NRK defines diversity broadly, but prioritises strongly multicultural background, language, networks and perspective from large immigrant groups from countries outside Western Europe. It is a goal that every third new employee shall have multicultural background or competence. There exists a separate talent programme (FleRe) in NRK for recruitment of persons with multicultural background.
The vision is that ‘together we create a Norway where everyone belongs’. This is a strategic area of effort for both content and organisation. NRK has among other things a multicultural glossary and internal guidance for its journalists. This gives advice on language use around immigration and ethnicity with regard to which words and concepts are to be used and which are not to be used. There is a long OBS-list and an even longer list of words and concepts that are not to be used.
Among other things limited use is recommended of concepts such as ‘immigrant’, ‘non-Western’, ‘foreign-cultural’ etc. Allegedly because the concepts can be imprecise or stigmatising. And advice is given to avoid mentioning ethnic background in criminal cases or other contexts, which can contribute to stigmatisation.
The NRK Charter is also clear that stories that show inclusion, successful integration and positive contributions from immigrants are to be emphasised. It is here that the World Cup coverage comes in. Coverage of negative sides such as crime and integration challenges is to be explained with emphasis on socio-economic causes, poverty and racism. Ethnicity, cultural or religious factors are not to be emphasised.
NRK has in other words formalised and institutionalised a clear strategic and editorial framework that is to promote the positive sides of diversity and inclusion and the non-Western immigration, as well as dampen the negative sides. This they call popular enlightenment. But it has all the characteristics of state-directed propaganda.
Non-Western immigration and multiculturalism are presented as unilaterally positive, while the demographic changes, the enormous costs and the societal challenges that immigration otherwise leads to, are toned down or framed and explained away as external problems (racism, right-extremist attitudes, socio-economic conditions, poverty and lacking support schemes and need for even greater transfers).
The systematically one-sided angle results in regular production of ‘happy stories’ about immigration, such as the community and unity during the football World Cup. It includes reports on how immigrants ‘save’ small district municipalities by taking jobs that Norwegians will not have, or positive stories about successful second-generation immigrants who become doctors, lawyers or NRK reporters.
In the news coverage ethnicity is under-communicated in connection with crime or other negative behaviour linked to immigrants, such as low labour participation and the over-consumption of social benefits, while positive representation is lifted forward. Terror coverage is often misleading. After jihadist attacks NRK preferably speculates in other directions, that the perpetrator is of unsound mind or that the cause lies in other ‘societal problems’.
This creates the impression that the threat is diffuse or that culture and Islam have nothing to do with the matter. In programmes such as Debatten voices are often invited that frame criticism as ‘xenophobia’. Positive diffuse narratives linked to immigration (food, culture, innovation) receive broad space, while concrete costs and disadvantages, family reunification, parallel societies, honour culture and population replacement receive less space.
This is classic framing and selection of what is to be emphasised. It shapes opinion in a direction that does not reflect reality. It leads to increasing dissonance between the official narrative that the state mediates through NRK and SSB and the actual empirical reality.
SSB has long sought to conceal what the non-Western immigration costs. The estimate is around 400–500 billion kroner annually, as a consequence of low labour participation and the over-consumption of social benefits. Ever since the 1970s SSB’s population projections have systematically under-estimated the growth in the immigrant population. Likewise it is sought to conceal that the non-Western immigration is going to lead to population replacement in a few decades, if it is allowed to continue as now.
This is not xenophobia, but simple mathematics and demography. The welfare state is pressed ever harder. Child welfare and police report of disproportionately great burden in immigrant-dense areas. Positive contributions exist, but the total picture is consistently negative across the reality that SSB presents, and far from the one-sided ‘enrichment’ that NRK mediates.
It is in other words as feared. The World Cup coverage with all the immigrant features was not coincidental. It was planned and a part of a centrally directed, extensive and persistent state information operation, in conflict with the NRK Charter and NRK’s own articles of association, and in conflict with everything that is called factual, fact-based and impartial information and news mediation in a democracy.
NRK works purposefully with a view to influencing the Norwegian people’s attitudes. This is politically directed broadcasting. It is state-directed propaganda implemented by the political class that the taxpayers are forced to pay for themselves over the tax bill. Patterns come to light in angle, selection of cases, sources and framework, language and concept use. It is planned and directed and not coincidental. The comparison with the Nazi propaganda during the war and Deutscher Fernsehfunk in the GDR is therefore not coincidental.
DFF was a pure propaganda tool for the GDR regime. All content was censored. The West was caricatured as decadent and revanchist, while East Germany appeared as a happy and progressive society. News was washed in accordance with ideology and party line. Entertainment served the party, the state and the regime. Deviance was punished hard, but not unlike the stigmatisation that takes place of immigration critics in Norway today. It was totalitarian state propaganda in a dictatorship state.
NRK operates in a democracy with apparent editorial freedom, competition and possibility for criticism. Nevertheless there exist striking parallels and similarities when it comes to narrative control and the handling of facts. Both institutions serve a state-/elite-supported ideology. In the GDR it was Marxist-Leninism and anti-capitalism. In Norway it is multiculturalism as moral imperative in the field of immigration with emphasis on ‘diversity’, ‘inclusion’ and presentation of national culture and identity as a problem.
Both, both DFF and NRK, use selection and narrative-directed choice in the mediation: Positive examples are highlighted, contradictory data are dampened. The difference is method and context. DFF had monopoly and coercion. NRK meets competition from alternative channels, in Norway first and foremost from Document and a handful of other alternative media.
That forces some self-correction. Nevertheless, as a state-financed actor with enormous resources and reach, NRK shapes opinions and opinion according to directives from the political elite of so-called ‘popularly elected’. That applies especially among those who do not seek alternative sources, first and foremost the older generation who still watch the evening news and believe what they read in Aftenposten and VG.
This is ‘soft power’, not direct censorship, but cultural hegemony through framework and recommendations, and at least equally effective. The hope lies in the younger generation who seek alternative media, and who to a far greater degree can obtain relevant context and contradiction and be placed in a position to form independent opinions.
To refuse to debate trade-offs such as economy, culture, religion and safety is not only irresponsible. It is directly undemocratic. That NRK has the same strategy on controversial policy areas such as immigration as the BBC and SVT, does not make it better. Western liberal media live in a left-leaning bubble that prioritises values over facts.
It can only end badly, as the dissonance between the false media reality and the empirical world we live in only becomes ever greater. Ever more have lost trust in NRK and seek away from traditional narrative-directed media. But it is sad to see that there are still many who only have NRK, TV 2 and the state-supported press as information sources. They are misled by the state channel’s propaganda. They simply do not understand what is really going on.
The ironic is that on top of it all they have ‘elected’ politicians who have forced them to pay to be deceived. The financing of NRK alone costs Norwegian taxpayers almost 8 billion a year. In addition comes the state press subsidy of almost half a billion as well as the wages to keep all the publicly employed information and communication advisers in work.
The solution is not censorship, but more transparency, broader recruitment, context and alternative perspectives, and abolition of the state monopoly. Democracy presupposes facts, truth-seeking and that media mirror reality with all its nuances, and not only a desired, but fictitious ideal image.
The solution is simple: Privatise NRK! Abolish the press subsidy! Sack the professional politicians! Let them sit max two periods before they get the chance to build too tight networks. Send them thereafter out into the real life, where we others live, and as far as possible away from the fictitious ideal image they try to foist on the voters.