What happened
An analysis from the research firm The Fix Research & Advisory and the news site The Local has examined over 26 000 articles on migration published by eleven Swedish media outlets between the 2022 and 2026 elections. The results show that only between 3 and 13 percent of the articles were based on experiences from the people directly affected. By 2026, the figure had fallen to around one in eighteen articles, while at least two-thirds of the reporting was conflict-driven or negative. Instead, the agenda was set by ministers, government agencies, and political parties, with Sverigedemokraterna at the center of more articles than any other party every single year. Coverage focused primarily on deportations, control, and asylum, despite Sweden granting more than ten times more work permits than asylum applications in 2025.
Our analysis
For four years, Swedish newsrooms have made the same choice as the government and its support party: speaking about new Swedes as a burden to be managed, never as equal citizens to speak with. When politicians and agency heads alone are allowed to define reality, people's lives are transformed into statistics and harsh political attacks. Those who uphold care services, run businesses, and pay taxes are reduced to anonymous backdrops in a political theater.
This media failure primarily benefits the forces that want to make anti-immigrant hostility the norm. By constantly chasing conflict and linking migration to crime and control, newsrooms give free momentum to Sverigedemokraterna's worldview. It is not neutral journalism when a party that built its entire existence on opposition to new Swedes is allowed to dictate what makes news, while regular labor migration barely appears in the columns.
The issue should not be about how politicians want to sharpen their tone ahead of the next election. The issue is what it costs democracy when a quarter of the population is systematically silenced in the country's largest media outlets. We are not guests to be talked about over our heads. We are Sweden.