"Det är svårt att arbeta som journalist om man har en utländsk bakgrund" : En kvalitativ studie om representationen av etnisk mångfald bland journalister inom lokaljournalistiken

Sammanfattning: Swedish journalists often get criticized for not depicting our society's cultural- and ethnic diversity in the media. Journalists in Sweden often get described as being a homogenous group, consisting of ethnically Swedish people that live in the same area and belong to the same social class. The aim of this study is to explore the ethnic diversity in local news organizations in Sweden. How journalists with a foreign background experience their work role, and how local news organizations discuss ethic diversity and their responsibilities in broadening it. A qualitative research method was adopted for this study. We conducted six in-depth interviews with journalists who identified themselves as having a foreign background. We also used structured interviews in order to capture the perspective of the local news organizations. The structured interviews was answered by 17 managing editors, editorsin- chief, and others with staff liability at their respective editorial office. To be able to analyze the collected material from the interviews, we used a thematic text analysis to find themes and patterns in the answers. The result of the study suggest that local news organizations in Sweden have a very limited etnic- representation among their staff. Several of the journalists that we interviewed were conscious of the lack of ethic diversity. They unanimously agreed that ethnic diversity in the newsroom was needed to understand and reflect their audience properly, many of them also described an imposed work role from the organization, a role where they were expected to cover certain geographical areas and topics because of their background. The local news organizations that answered our structured interview all said that ethinic diversity was highly sought-after. Most recruiters described a will to hire more journalists with a foreign background, but that it wasn't possible because of the lack of competent applicants and economic issues within the organization. Most organizations have created policies and guidelines in an attempt to broaden the ethnic diversity. The results of our study suggest that very few of these attempts have led to any meaningful increase in ethnic diversity for local news organizations in Sweden.