Media member Sigmundur Ernir Rúnarsson said it was right to shut down RÚV’s advertising department. Sigmundur, who is the latest guest on Sölva Tryggvason’s podcast, erroneously says that a government agency has a steroid sales department that tries to siphon off revenue that would otherwise go to private media.
“The situation of private media in Iceland is very bad and getting worse. I don’t think there are about 15 newspapers that have gone out of business in the last decades, and that doesn’t include regional media. Part of that, of course, has to do with RÚV. I’m not necessarily of the opinion that National Radio should be taken out of the advertising business, but that the advertising department should be shut down and instead only have of advertising reception. That’s how this hard selling would stop. This is not the right kind of government agency to have a steroid sales department and roam the country like a scene stealer. The National Broadcaster is on a budget and an extra budget, and therefore the government cannot act in such a way as to collect as much advertising revenue as possible,” says Sigmundur Ernir and continues:
“RÚV should fulfill its role, but not go further and further by assigning itself more roles. The National Theater is not responsible for running restaurants throughout Hverfisgatan. Its role is to show good plays It’s hard enough for private media to compete with foreign media and the demand that everything be free without the progress of the RÚV getting in the way There are fewer and fewer people doing journalism the job of their lives, and the professionalism is likely to be diluted. The requirement is to deliver as much content as quickly as possible with as few people as possible. That has to affect the quality.”
Orthodoxy
In the episode, Sigmundur also talks about orthodoxy and is of the opinion that one should not go overboard. For example, it is not right to change language without discussion, just because people are afraid.
“The discussion must take place, even if it can be sensitive. For example, it has become the language today to degenerate the language. In the RÚV news it is no longer possible to say that many people come together, but the word many should be used instead. Many who? Why not use many or many? The language is rapidly desexualizing and I believe the media needs to stand up and be careful that the language is not not barking at record speed. People are politely moving towards more than two genders, but I’m not necessarily of the opinion that we should go in that direction. There are rules in Icelandic that we have to follow. If the rules will just go away, we need to have a real discussion about it. You can’t just be a macho and a bad person if you want to discuss things. I shouldn’t be ashamed to say a lot of Icelanders and no” lots of Icelanders,” Sigmundur says and continues:
“We have examples of crowd suppression going too far in Iceland, and it’s important to relax and not just be wise afterwards. For example, during the crash of 2008 and the pandemic, there was some amount of mobbing that was not good. For example, the Supreme Court got lost in the collapse and went far beyond its scope, simply because of the mood of society.”
Fear that everything is allowed
Sigmundur, who has worked with the media for decades, says everything has completely changed in the media landscape with the introduction of smartphones and social media. What he fears most is that anything goes in today’s mass media.
“I’m afraid that with the current trend, the media will no longer become uncensored and ruthless. For a long time we had controlled media that follows certain procedures, where many things are not allowed. Although, of course, mistakes have often been made these media have been run by qualified people who have experience and training in what they do but now almost anyone can post anything and it creates a lot of discussion more ruthless. I fear the trend that with uncensored media it will be easier to attack anyone with a phone as a weapon,” he says.
Sigmundur says it is normal for the media and media people to be criticized and it should be that way. But on the other hand, we can also sometimes talk about what is good in the media and their role in improving society.
“It is often forgotten in discussions about the media to discuss their role in what has improved in society. Our society was extremely homogeneous and a lot of things had to be put away in a drawer and not discussed. When I was a boy in Akureyri, the guy was just a perfect breadwinner and the woman was a wonderful housewife, and the outward appearance was that everything was very uniform There were to be no gays or lesbians, no depressed people, no suicides and no drunks. When Dagblaðið was founded, real journalism started in Iceland and we started to expose society and show it as it really was. Until then, everything was more or less smothered. I’ll always be proud that I helped change that trend and started to open up about things that really needed to be discussed.”
You can access Sigmund’s interview and all of Sölva Tryggvason’s interviews and podcast episodes at solvitryggva.is
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