“High Trust” in SVT and SR Based on Incorrect Figures

Time and again, the SOM Institute at the University of Gothenburg has claimed in its surveys that trust in public service, SVT and SR, is high among the Swedish population. However, this has been based on misleading figures.

Every year, the SOM Institute measures Swedes’ trust in various types of media, and every time, public service comes out on top. In the latest survey, 70 percent of Swedes stated that they have very or fairly high confidence in SVT and SR.

Among right-wing voters, however, trust has never been lower. According to the SOM Institute, the results are representative of the Swedish population, but it now appears that these are groups that are underrepresented in the calculations and the institute has chosen not to weight the results.

Sweden Democrats’ voters are the group with the lowest trust in public service, and they are also heavily underrepresented in the SOM survey year after year. Other groups that are also underrepresented are young people and those with lower education levels. This is shown in an investigation by Kvartal.

More Truthful Result

Medieakademin also measures the public’s trust in the media, and there, trust in public service has dropped sharply since 2010. The results differ substantially – in 2018 the SOM Institute survey stated that 73 percent had confidence in SVT, while the corresponding figure from Medieakademin was 58 percent.

For several years now, SVT and SR have stopped reporting Medieakademin’s figures, referring to the SOM survey as being more reliable.

– It is highly likely that this is a problem for the survey and that it does not accurately reflect reality, says Johan Martinsson, former head of the SOM Institute at the University of Gothenburg from 2017–2023, and now Head of Opinion at the polling company Demoskop.

According to Martinsson, publishing figures that are not weighted is extremely rare.

SVT CEO Anne Lagercrantz. Image: Facsimile SVT / AleWi.

Aware of the Problem

At the SOM Institute, survey leader Marcus Weissenbilder says he is aware that SD sympathizers are underrepresented in the survey.

– We have a very ambitious approach in our methodology, so we like to think we get as close to the truth as possible – but no one can actually know what the exact truth is, he says.

The institute says it has analyzed the effect of weighting the results but claims it does not improve the accuracy to any significant extent.

Åkesson: Scandal

SD leader Jimmie Åkesson comments on the investigation and says that if the claims are true, it is nothing but a scandal, where both the SOM Institute and other actors have uncritically spread the manipulated information.