slutet på sagan prinsessan dianas död i press, radio och tv

compared to international figures – an
extremely large circulation of daily newspapers
of high quality. Journalistic ideals
are still prominent in Swedish newspapers,
although to varying degrees among
the papers and often in conflict with financial
demands.
The Swedish media structure is multifaceted.
But without exception, Princess
Diana’s death was given considerable attention
in all of the studied media. This
attention, however, varied in extent and
focus.
Still, the Swedish media are primarily
part of an international media network comprising
a small number of dominant actors.
When an event is defined as what we
might call meganews by the networks
dominating media, the supply of material
on this event becomes almost endless.
Moreover, as a consequence of extensive,
long-term coverage, people’s interest in
Princess Diana had probably been great
for years in Sweden and certainly as great
in the rest of Western Europe. When news
of the Princess’s death came and was defined
as meganews, all the dikes tended to
break; traditional news values were set
aside. For many newsrooms around the
world, it was probably a question of publishing
as much as possible, and standards
of, among other things, source analysis
were disregarded. The news media in
focus in this study, and Swedish media in
general, probably greatly resembled the
international commercial media – and not
least the British media – in connection
with the coverage of Princess Diana’s
death.
When meganews occurs, almost all news
reporting becomes uniform. The large,
international news producers define how
the event should be assessed and presented,
and this is distributed throughout the
world. The supply of material is so great
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that new, original angles are hardly necessary.
Moreover, such originality is expensive
and production time consuming.
When an event is defined as meganews,
no medium working with any traditional
form of news distribution can diverge too
greatly from other media. The newsroom
doing so risks reduced standing in the
eyes of its audience.
Thus, the media coverage of Princess
Diana’s death is a contemporary example
of how the international media system
and the Swedish media covered an event
defined as meganews. This, however, concerns
the media of the recent past. Both
the international and Swedish media are
changing at an accelerating pace. Upheavals
in the media’s financial base – for
example, purchases and mergers as well
as increased competition combined with
ultra-rapid development of distribution
and production techniques – along with
the advent of new media forms are fundamentally
changing the opportunities and
paths of information in society. During
spring 2000 in Sweden, we have seen,
among other things, major transformations
of Sveriges Television’s newsrooms,
great changes in the organisation of many
newspapers, and contingent changes in
the terms of more traditional journalistic
work.
One question is whether the trends
mentioned in this summary’s introduction
will be intensified in the future. Will
big news events – whose coverage is steered
by access to pictures – dominate the
news-service’s content while demands for
reliable and knowledgeable sources remain
low, and while lack of factual information
is compensated for with speculations?
In such news, the journalist’s own
perceptions are central and “ordinary”
people’s strong expressions of emotion
prioritised over expert sources’ knowled-