Press Law of Sweden

·         Suman Acharya

Sweden strongly protects freedom of speech and was a pioneer for officially abolishing censorship. Sweden is the first nation which strongly guaranteed the freedom of speech expression including press with the monarchical system. According to the constitutions 1809, press freedom means "the right of every Swedish man to issues publication without any obstacles previously laid by the public power which means free interchange of opinions and enlightenment of the public."

The legal system of Sweden is civil law system which evaluates each and every issues of the case and does not depend on precedent of the court. So the legal system of Sweden is different than UK press system. Sweden's constitution includes the 1974 "Instrument of Government", the freedom of Press Act 1949 and the Freedom of Speech Act 1991. Chapter 2, article 1 of the Instrument of Government guaranties to all citizen as "In their relations with the public administration, freedom to express opinions and receive and communicated information in following condition."

(i) Freedom of Expression: The freedom to communicate information and to express ideas, opinions and emotions orally or written forms or pictorial representation or in any other way.

(ii) Freedom of Information: The freedom to obtain and receive information and otherwise acquaint oneself with the utterances of others…

The most important sources of Sweden law are written statutes interpreted with the aid of the preparatory works of parliament, parliamentary committee and others bodies involved in the process of drafting and adopting legislation.  This Swedish Government has ratified the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and its 1^st optional protocol in 1971. It also ratifies European Convention on Human Rights too. Such international treaty and relation has strong positive effect on Swedish press law. The history of Swedish press freedom can be classified in following stage.

·         Before 1772: Concept of the press freedom

·         From 1772 to 1809: Monarchical interference

·         From 1810 to 1920: Transition period

·         1920-1937: Centralization of media

·         1937-1955: Emancipation era

·         1955-1977: Professionalization era

·         1977-1987: Decentralization era

·         After 1987: Commercialization and professionalism

Some of the laws imposed in Sweden under freedom of Press Act are as follows:

(1) Defamation law

Freedom of Press Act specifies two forms of defamation as libel and affront in Sweden. Affronts concerns personal face to face insults and is rarely the basis of complaints against the press. Libel is by far the most frequent ground for legal action against media but it is not a very common.

(2) Invasion of privacy

Privacy is not explicitly protected under Freedom of Press Act. Indirectly defamation gives some protections in terms of the invasion of the privacy stores about private matter are offend likely to expose to person in question to the contempt of others and the rarely deemed to be justifiable. Code of ethics also protect invasion of privacy in Sweden.

(3) Excess to government held information

Laws regarding freedom of information sets forth to access to the public record made by the government. However, classified information, which is taken as secret, couldn't be searched by the journalist. All common publicly important subject matter should be published or disseminated via mass media and the journalists have the right to make excess to the public information.

(4) Prior restrain

No publication shall be subject to censor before printing nor shall be prohibited from printing the materials. Law and constitution does not prohibit pre-publication censorship. There are no orders in Swedish law corresponding to gag orders or similar restrain.

(5) Protection of source

Chapter 3, Article 1 of the Freedom of Press Act explicitly prohibits the investigation and discloser of journalist's source with certain limited restriction. A journalist who reveals his/her source without consent is subject to criminal liability. Police can enter in media if the reasonable case arises but police should give search warrant to the media organization.

(6) Restriction on offensive language

Freedom of Press Act prohibits the expression of threat against or contrary for a population group based on its race, skin color, national or ethnic origin or religious faith. Such offensive language referring to any cult or religion or public moral is prohibited.

(7) Blasphemy and protection of public moral

There are two provisions in Freedom of Press Act concerning obscenities, pornography or public morals. On the one hand, it prohibits publication of child pornography and on the other hand, it restricts on the publication of pictorial depiction of sexual violence.

(8) Advertisement law

The Freedom of Press Act prohibits advertising of tobacco and alcohol. Courts have imposed some restriction on commercial speech too. These restrictions applied only to what the courts call pure commercial speech and not to political and ideological advertising.

(9) Official Secret Act 1980

Sweden has the provision to protect the secrecy revelation from government and information can be secret for more than 20 years which depends on the classification of the information. Swedish justice is generally opened to public and media. Although camera and tape recorder are not permitted in the court room, general session of parliament is opened but parliament committee. Session is not opened to journalist. It restricts following issues.

• National security and foreign affairs 
•  Financial, pecuniary foreign money exchange policy
•  Administrative prosecution like inspection, control watch
• Crime prevention or penalty
•  Public economic welfare issues
•  Privacy or economical data security
• Preservation of Flora and Fauna issues

'The End...'