In public Sweden, intensive work is underway to balance the budget for next year. We have high inflation and expect recession. A warning is issued against making too large savings by reducing the number of communicators. Politicians and debaters sometimes question the need for these, which is seen as short-term and risky for citizens' participation in society.
Communicators in the public sector are democracy workers. They ensure that citizens have access to the necessary information to be active members of society. The role of our communicators is crucial in explaining and communicating political decisions, rules and expectations to the public. Reducing the number of communicators can undermine democracy and trust between the public and citizens. This trust is especially important in times of crisis and change.
Two leaders of Sweden's communicators, Johanna Lindell and Caroline Thunved, highlight in Dagens Arena the importance of communicators as a cornerstone for maintaining trust and transparency within the public sector and for promoting citizens' involvement and participation in society. They also emphasize that communication is essential to the health of democracy and that it is important that decision-makers recognize the role of the communicator as a key factor in maintaining citizens' trust in the public sector.
Read more in Dagens Arena.
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It's probably a bit awkward with that. I myself have worked as a communicator. And communicators work for the organization that has hired them. If that organization has democratic goals, it's ok, if not, no communicators can do anything about it.
And I have no illusions about the democratic aspirations of the Swedish state. It has, for at least thirty years and regardless of political majority, worked to increase inequality, to strengthen capital at the expense of workers, and to centralize power.
Communicators paid by this state can only work to ensure that these goals continue to apply.
We have to realize that the relatively decent state of the 30s-40s-50s-60s-70s no longer exists.
I think the authorities' communicators are still needed for functional reasons. My experience as a journalist and communicator of various mass media is that public communicators often lie less. However, I believe in today's information society that communicators are needed so that people can move correctly among authorities and in society.
I'm not saying they have no function. Unfortunately, the function has become a bit too large. It becomes far too much the version of the companies, or the state administrations, that applies, because they are the ones who have enough money to pay communicators. It would be better if some impartial body was responsible for the final version, the one that reaches the general public. For example. impartial media. If it could be arranged somehow, there are always hidden power holders there too.
A problem to solve, on the way to a better society.
The more I learn about the media, the more I see how much they lie. Dagens Nyheter is lying about the fiscal policy framework and about government deficits. The mass media lie largely about interest rates having any effect on today's inflation. There is no independent media except for the opposition media. But I still think that communicators have a certain value because we as citizens need to find out how to orientate ourselves in society.
Yes, that's where we need more communicators! And more knowledgeable! And better organized!
The knowledge requirements of the communicator must be reduced. Today, one and the same communicator must be an entire advertising and communication agency in one and the same person. It's absurd.
On the other hand, the communicator should be savvy enough not to pass on nonsense.
But what you say shows the problem. For a communicator employed to convey the interests of the boss, there is no difference between facts and advertising.
Although the journalists and scientists who write about social history with an emphasis on economics lie like brush binders in the mass media, but we still need journalists and the mass media.
As George Monbiot wrote somewhere: The media is owned by billionaires and relays what the billionaires want relayed.
Or as the legendary chairman of the Environmental Association (now Friends of the Earth) in the 80s, Björn Eriksson, used to say: The media is in the entertainment business and has no obligation to say anything that is important or true.
We get to create our own media. Like the labor movement in the 1890s. And consider both commercial/state media as irrelevant, regardless of whether those who work there are called journalists or informants.
If we are good at it, the media is forced to tighten up so as not to appear as idiots.