From yearly to daily press meetings: The development of the government press relations in Sweden

Abstract

Emerging with the Second World War, and taking its modern form in the 1970s with Olof Palme, the government press conference has today become an almost daily event in Sweden with frequent informal and impromptu meetings between the assembled press and the prime minister. The history of this phenomenon reveals a development from respectful off-the-record sessions to direct webcasted conferences with PR-minded, policy-selling politicians as well as, at least sometimes, journalists eager to inquire into problematic issues. The initial stage, during the war, was very intense, as Stockholm became a gathering point for international war correspondents. This study, grounded in multidisciplinary relational conceptualizations and using a multidimensional methodology, aims to tell the story of the development of governmental press conferences in Sweden.

Keywords

government press relations political communication PR history press conferences

Press relations can be regarded as the most important aspect of governmental PR, and press conferences are a significant component of these relations. This article presents the historical development of Swedish governmental press relations in terms of the use and form of meetings with the press with a focus on press conferences. These sessions can reasonably be regarded as the most standardized form of group contact a government has with the media. Historically, the press conference has been the almost exclusive form of government–press relations, alongside the circulation of press releases.

The article aims to ascertain the significance of these conferences for the government and its communication process. Questions of interest are: What changes and developments can be identified and what differences can be noted between the terms of office of different governments? How are the conferences conducted over the years? What are the subjects/ topics of the conferences?

In Sweden, government press conferences first emerged as a notable phenomenon at the beginning of the Second World War, though the occasional meetings had been arranged earlier in the 1930s. Internationally, this new type of government relations arose late in Sweden; in Germany and the USA, regular contacts with the press began prior to the First World War (Kumar, 2005; Puchan, 2006). However, both began in connection with war, in line with Mattelart’s (1994: xiii) thesis that war is an essential component of the history of international communication.

Literature review

Conceptualizing the government–press relationship

Political communication is to a large extent performed and disseminated via the media, a situation that has become more pervasive during the last two or three decades according to several observers. Mediated political communication has thus, in the view of Bennett and Entman (2001), become central to politics in contemporary democracies, and governance could not occur without various uses of media. Other voices that accord with this view are Manning (2001), who concludes that media work has become a more central part of political activity, and Davis (2007), who asserts that sources such as politicians consciously treat the news media as a part of their political strategies.

Press conferences and other types of meetings with the assembled press are a traditional and common form of political communication for governments. They can furthermore be regarded as a very important way to maintain contact with the media and to be held publicly accountable. These sessions ‘have come to be regarded as part of the foundation of democratic government’, with politicians being ‘expected to show that they are responsible to the public by explaining their policies’ (Kumar, 2007: 255).

The relationship between government actors and journalists have been studied and analysed in the light of several frameworks and theoretical backgrounds. According to Coleman (1990), both journalists and institutional actors often appear in complex as well as in simple relationships, in both organizational and in more personal relationships resulting from continuous and long-term contact. They often play parallel roles within the same relationship.

As part of their extensive studies in political communication, Blumler and Gurevitch have formulated a widely used model for the journalist–source relationship:

Media-disseminated political communications derive from interactions between (1) two sets of mutually dependent and mutually adaptive actors, pursuing divergent (though overlapping) goals, whose relationships with each other are typically (2) role-regulated, giving rise to (3) an emergent shared culture, specifying how they should behave toward each other, the ground rules of which are (4) open to contention and conflicting interpretation, entailing a potential for disruption, which is often (5) controlled by informal and/or formal mechanisms of conflict management. (1981: 476f).

Another model has been formulated by Broom et al. (1997), who propose a three-step model, within a system theory framework, to describe the connection between the two parties. In the first step, input, a connection arises, when, among other things, they experience mutual expectations, mutual threat and a mutual belief in the need to work together. The second step describes the core concept of the relationship – exchange, transmission, communication and other forms of ‘interconnected activities’. The third stage, output, which addresses the consequences of the relationship, includes goal achievement, routine behaviour and reduced autonomy.

Researchers interested in the politician–journalist relationship generally share the view of a cooperative relationship formed through mutual adaptation in which reciprocal needs and exchange are primary parameters in an interaction that becomes increasingly pronounced. This view is found in a number of studies, not least in the field of journalism, including for example studies by Fishman (1980), Cook (1989) and Schudson (2000) as well as Larsson (1998, 2002), studying the Swedish situation. As an early observer of this phenomenon, Sigal claims that ‘newsmaking is a consensual process … within a context of shared values’ (Sigal, 1973:180). This symbiotic relationship has been described in terms of colourful metaphors, the best known of which is undoubtedly Gans’s ‘it takes two to tango’ (Gans, 1979: 116). Others see the relationship in more drastic terms, calling it a love–hate relationship: ‘They like each other – and hate each other – because they are so much alike’ (Hess, 1981: 126). From an organizational and PR standpoint Heath discusses the existence of a ‘composite’ of journalists, newsmakers, government officials, and experts interacting ‘in a self-confirming infrastructure’ (Heath, 1997: 265). Some observers view the collaboration as running even deeper, with the journalists and the politicians, through their relationship, playing a key role in the social and cultural construction of politics itself, and with reporters comprising a ‘key component … of the political centre and the business of politics’ (Davis, 2010: 73).

The question, however, is which side steers or controls the relationship even if they cooperate in general. The research community is divided into two camps (see Davis, 2010; Franklin et al., 2010), with one arguing that the journalists control the relationship (Linsky, 1986; Patterson, 1994), and the other arguing that the sources control it, or as Gans (1979) extending his dance metaphor puts it: ‘the sources do the leading’. Some voices, however, take a middle ground claiming that the dominant party varies at different stages in the news process; the sources are thought to control the first steps, after which the journalists take over and control the later editorial steps (Strömbäck and Nord, 2006). The controlling side can also be observed to vary from situation to situation depending on the aim and topic for the contact, whether it is a case of politicians providing information or of journalists performing their scrutiny and accountability tasks (Ekström et al., 2006). Speaking of government information, Gandy has formulated the concept of information subsidy, understood as ‘efforts by policy actors to increase the consumption of persuasive messages by reducing their [the news organisations’] costs’ (Gandy, 1992:142).

In more general terms, the question arises of which side holds the power, the institutions or the media, a question that has long been the subject of significant scholarly attention. The first view, that the media have the most power, is expressed by Altheide and Snow (1979) with their concept of media logic, to take a single example. British cultural critics (Hall et al., 1993[1978]) express the second view, that the media are subordinate to institutional power-holders, using the concept of primary definers, according to which institutions specify and determine what is news. But the question of who has the power is a delicate one. For instance, both sides can be seen as possessing power in the sense that the power of societal institutions can depend on the media’s power, because the former use the working logic of the latter to their own advantage. The media-logical thesis can thus be invoked to assert that both groups possess a measure of power.

The exchanging aspect of the relationship can be explained with exchange theory, as developed by Homans (1957–58) on the individual level and Blau (1963) on the organizational level. People exchange not only goods but also symbols, ideas and information, and large givers try to receive a great deal in return, while large receivers are under pressure to reciprocate. Coleman (1990) explains this thinking in more economical terms: ‘Actors are connected to resources (and thus indirectly to one another) through only two relations: their control over resources and their interest in resources.’ According to this theory, official actors control the information and the journalists control the media, and hence officials provide information in exchange for media space. As Tunstall (1970) succinctly puts it, there is ‘an exchange of media for publicity’. A modification of this view is that the two sides negotiate their respective resources, as put forward by Ericson et al. (1989) in their organizational studies of information activities of official institutions in relation to the press.

Ericson et al. furthermore describe and analyse the meeting places or intersection points for institutional actors and journalists using the concept of front or back regions that are either open or closed. This springs from Goffman’s (1959) individually oriented metaphor of life as a theatre where people perform both front- and back-stage, which the Ericson team adapted to serve the organizational level. They analyse the meeting places in terms of how much access journalists have to the institutions and whether information is open or not, whether it is subject to enclosure or disclosure. In back regions, where politicians and officials work and take decisions, journalists normally have no access. Information there is secret, but can be disclosed and given in confidence. In front regions, media and public contacts are allowed; information is disclosed and it is possible to publish it, but it can also be restricted and more or less censored (Ericson et al., 1989: 7ff).

Quite a number of the prime ministers’ press conferences in Sweden (as well as in the USA and UK) deal with foreign affairs and are often held together with foreign leaders, for the domestic and international press. Government public and press relations can here be seen as instances of public and media diplomacy. This idea emanates from a scholarly interest in connecting public relations (PR) with international relations and an ambition to combine PR with diplomacy and its counter-concepts public diplomacy and media diplomacy (Signitzer and Wamser 2006).

Diplomacy involves a state’s pursuit of relationships with other states and governments in order to further the own country’s ends (Jönsson, 2010; L’Etang, 2006) and consists of representation, communication, and negotiation between politicians and officials ‘designed to promote foreign policy by formal agreement or tacit adjustment’ (Berridge, 2010:1). Public diplomacy signifies relations between a government and foreign publics to bring about understanding for the nation’s ideas and ideals through communication with these publics (Melissen, 2005; Van Dyke and Verčič, 2009), or, in other words, ‘through engagement with foreign publics’ (Cull, 2009: 12). Media diplomacy can be briefly described as the news media’s role in foreign policy and the use of the media to conduct diplomacy (Van Dyke and Verčič, 2009), or be more fully defined as ‘uses of the media to communicate with state and nonstate actors, to build confidence and advance negotiations, as well as to mobilize public support for agreements’ (Gilboa, 2000: 275f). L’Etang (2006), arguing that PR can be seen as diplomacy when working internationally, uses the term cultural diplomacy to describe the aim and task to reach foreign publics (see also Signitzer and Coombs 1992).

While diplomacy works with discrete and secret means, public and media diplomacy works with open and so-called soft means. Exchange of information and services between representatives of states is central to the origins of diplomacy (Jönsson and Hall, 2005), while public and media diplomacy are described in more promotional terms. Public diplomacy uses strategic communications methods such as media contacts, conferences, events and exchanges of people and culture (Pamment, 2011). Media diplomacy is also pursued through activities such as press conferences, interviews and leaks, with the aim of using the media for the purposes of signalling (of messages), communication and negotiations (Gilboa, 2008).

Regardless of whether the government’s press contacts have a diplomatic character or are only intended for domestic consumption, many analysts see them as displaying many clearly strategic elements, or rather as indications of growing strategic work by governments. Against this background of increasing medialization, Franklin argues that politicians are packaged for media marketing and are skilled at managing and manipulating the mass media (Franklin, 2004[1994]). The growing use of the media is accomplished by an increasing professionalization of political communication with PR specialists, press officers and spin doctors constantly engaged in news management (Manning, 2001; Negrine, 2008). In the same vein, Blumler earlier claimed to have found that political strategists and advisers, as press agents, ‘immerse journalists in what appears to be an increasingly manipulative opinion environment’ (Blumler, 1990:104).

Press conferences – international historic review

The relationship between media and government is described and analysed in a number of studies, both generally and in terms of the forms and methods of this relationship. Government press conferences per se, however, have been studied to a rather limited extent, with the exception of Martha Kumar’s extensive studies of the president’s conferences in the USA. The first country to institute press conferences appears, however, to have been Germany.

As early as the 1870s, a press bureau was installed at the German Foreign Ministry and press conferences were introduced as a new form of contact with (selected) media representatives. With the outbreak of war in 1914, the government established a press office, mostly producing information and propaganda concerning the war. In the Weimar period, the state as well as the private sector seem to have allocated considerable resources for press relations and to have undertaken extensive press contacts. But the circumstances changed drastically in 1933 when the Nazis took power, with media being shut down, censured or transformed into a state propaganda apparatus (Bentele and Wehmeier, 2009; Nessman, 2000; Puchan, 2006).

Presidential conferences in the USA

Government press meetings in the USA, in the sense of presidential press conferences, were initiated a century ago by Theodore Roosevelt (president 1901–09), who invited the press to meet him, though only in smaller selected groups. Regular press conferences began with president Wilson just prior to the First World War. In the subsequent years, press conferences were used to highly varying degrees at the White House. Franklin Roosevelt gave a total of over 1000 conferences (1933–45), on average 84 conferences per year, though many were short. From the 1950s onward (Eisenhower followed by Kennedy) most American presidents arranged 20–30 conferences per year, among them the three latest, Clinton, G.W. Bush and Obama with around 25 conferences each per year. Notable exceptions are Nixon and Reagan, with 6–7 meetings per year (Kumar, 2005, 2007, 2011).

The history of the American press conference has, according to Kumar (2005), passed through four periods. In the first period the meetings were off-the-record, with the president answering questions without agreeing to be quoted. In the second period, Roosevelt held conferences where he gave more information and presented his policies, often in seminar-like meetings, though still off-the-record. A new phase began with Eisenhower, with the press conferences being televised and the president standing at a podium instead of sitting at a table with the reporters. In the latest period, starting in the 1980s, the conferences were remodelled in several ways (French, 1982; Kumar, 2005).

One such development is that alongside the solo conferences that used to be the norm, so-called joint conferences are also held, mostly together with foreign leaders. Another change is that presidents choose to hold short question-and-answer sessions with a smaller pool of journalists instead of traditional conferences with a range of questions from a large body of reporters. These changes were intended to reduce the potential negative impact of these events if the presidents stood alone confronted by many questions of a problematic nature (Kumar, 2007).

According to Grossman and Kumar (1979), during a presidency the relationship between the president and the press passes through three phases: alliance, competition and detachment. The alliance phase is marked by a partnership in which the media look for interesting stories and personalities around the new administration and in which the president dominates the agenda. The second phase, in full swing by the end of the first year, has a more adversarial style with reporters looking for problems and conflicts, and the chief executive attempting to steer the media. Still there is a strong element of cooperation. In the third period, often beginning when a president announces intent to run for re-election, the relationship is managed in a more controlled and structured manner with the aim of achieving massive exposure for the president. There is also a tendency to delegate media relations to ‘surrogates’ (Grossman and Kumar 1979). Graber agreed with this phase map, also stating that during the later phases, in an attempt to avoid adverse publicity for the president, press relations are delegated from top officials to low-level officials (Graber 1984).

The use of press conferences and the forms they take differ from president to president. The phenomenon should be seen from an individual president-centred perspective rather than a presidency-centred perspective devoid of political and other contextual factors, Eshbaugh-Soha (2003) claims. Some presidents favour press conferences as an instrument to express policy, while others avoid them, disliking the media or preferring other means of communicating (e.g. Kennedy in the first case and Nixon and Ford in the other). Carolyn Smith, defining the press conference as ‘a semi-institutional, quasi- spontaneous, inherently adversarial public encounter’, argues in line with this that the exchanges between the presidents and the press are based on a fundamentally adversarial relationship. The level of conflict has, not surprisingly, differed between presidents over the years, and has also changed during the same presidency, with Reagan as one example (Smith, 1990).

The British prime minister and press conferences

In the UK, press conferences with the prime minister seem to have been a rather unusual phenomenon during the entire 20th century. Only a handful such conferences can be found earlier, held by Edward Heath and Harold Wilson in the 1960s–70s, together with one held by John Major in the 1990s. To this comes, starting with Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s, the so-called doorstep press conferences outside the office at 10 Downing Street, where prime ministers, often together with overseas guests, give statements to which the reporters throw out questions (Seymore-Ure 2003).

The milieu of the press–politician relationship is, however, rather special in the UK with its lobby system in parliament, which involves journalists and political actors meeting regularly in connection with parliamentary sessions. Since before the Second World War, and as a daily routine since the 1950s, the prime minister’s press secretary has held briefings with the lobby reporters at No. 10 Downing Street (the prime minister’s residence) in the mornings and in the House of Commons in the evenings. Until the 1970s, some few prime ministers occasionally held these briefings by themselves (Cockerell et al.,1984; Seymore-Ure, 2003). The holding of briefings became a very strong institution in the Thatcher period under the direction of her press secretary and close adviser (Ingham), who spoke for her and acted in an driving manner on her behalf (Kavanagh and Seldon, 1999; Tunstall 1996).

Concerning the press function, a small press office was installed at the prime minister’s office in 1931 with the first press officer. This office remained staffed by one single press secretary for a couple of decades (though Winston Churchill apparently chose not to use any press officer in his last term). From the 1960s onward, the staff at the office gradually increased to comprise half-a-dozen persons by the end of the century. At the department level, some ministries began establishing press units and employing press officers from the 1930s and onward, and several larger ministries arranged press conferences starting in the 1940s (Kavanagh and Seldon, 1999; Ogilvy-Webb, 1965; Seymore-Ure, 2003).

Still, press conferences with the prime minister were not a regular occurrence until 2002. The government’s relationship with the press changed significantly when (New) Labour came to power in 1997 under the leadership of Tony Blair. The new government expanded its media ambitions and created substantial resources for media contacts with an upgraded well-staffed press office, led by another dynamic press officer (Campbell) and a newly centralized departmental information system (Kuhn 2007; Negrine 2008). Blair held five ad-hoc press conferences in 2000–01, most of them in response to emergencies, including 9/11. The following year he started having regular press conferences, normally every month. The prime minister had now begun holding press conferences in the style of the US president and ‘the Blair communication machine now resembled that of the White House’ (Seymour-Ure, 2003: 136).

Seymore-Ure (2003) identifies four types of prime ministerial press conferences. One is the press conference as routine. A second is the conference as culmination, signalling the end of a summit or negotiation. The third type is the conference as hot news, for example concerning crisis and cabinet changes. The last is the stocktaking conference, at which the prime minister gives an overview or sums up a broad issue.

The attitudes of the prime ministers towards the press have been described as highly variegated, with some prime ministers having very limited and frosty press relations, and others maintaining tight and close contact, not least Tony Blair who – following in the footsteps of Lloyd George, British prime minster 1916–22 and described as the father of news management – arranged to have complete articles written by his cronies and placed in the newspapers (Cockerell et al., 1984: 67). Some prime ministers, though seldom or never meeting reporters, held meetings with newspaper owners and senior editors, for instance Churchill and Harold McMillan in the 1950s, and Thatcher in the 1980s (Kavanagh and Seldon, 1999).

Methodology

This study, as part of the research project ‘Press Conferences as a Public Arena’ (The Swedish Research Council), is based on three types of sources. One is archival material (from the National Archives, the Central Government Archives, and the Labour Movement/Social Democratic Party Archives). A second type is diaries, memoirs and biographies by/about a number of ministers and some other politicians, among them the extensive, almost daily, diary of Tage Erlander, Swedish prime minister for the long period of 23 years (1946–69). The third source consists of interviews with former prime ministers, state secretaries and press officers, as well as journalists with lengthy experience of reporting on parliamentary and governmental affairs.

Findings

The story of governmental press conferences

During the first three decades of the 20th century, contact between the Swedish government and the press were very limited. Individual contact, however, did occur when a reporter happened to meet a minister in parliament, but no group press meetings were organized, except on some rare occasions, as when the prime minister had to resign in 1932 after receiving economic support from the finance magnate Kreuger whose business empire crashed that year. The government was scarcely interested in organizing media contacts (though several prime ministers had been journalists and editors before entering government). Politicians informed the citizens not via the media but by giving general speeches at party and public meetings, while the political news reporting for the press mostly consisted of summarizing such speeches. On the whole, national politics was of little interest for the news media in these decades (Ekdal, 2010; Isaksson, 2002).

Government press relations changed considerably when the Second World War broke out in 1939. The interest in meeting was strengthened on both sides. Shortly after the war began, the government summoned the media to provide information about its war response, but above all to warn the press concerning how to write about the aggressors, or more precisely, to be careful in expressing opinions about the German and Soviet rulers. Relations with Nazi Germany were extremely delicate, and it was feared that Sweden would be drawn into the war. These admonitions did not, however, stop all newspapers’ criticisms, which soon resulted in a number of sanctions being imposed by the state authorities, among them indictments of editors, transport prohibition of newspapers and threats of censorship, though censorship was never implemented (archive materials at the Riksarkivet/Swedish National Archives (SNA), n.d.).

Swedish PR starts with war information

Shortly after the war began, the government established a special Information Bureau for domestic ‘propaganda’ purposes. With Sweden isolated and lacking imports of foodstuffs, not least coffee, as well as important raw materials such as rubber for producing tyres, one of the tasks of the bureau was to inform people about how to manage their lives in times of scarcity. A second was to warn the public about spies and not to speak to strangers about military matters such as troop transport and defence installations. A special logo, ‘En svensk tiger’ (‘A Swede keeps quiet’) was launched in the form of a tiger (as the words for ‘keeping quiet’ and ‘tiger’ are the same in Swedish), and it still remains in the mind of the people today. While not involving formal censorship, a third task was to monitor the press and prevent it from revealing military secrets. The very first PR professionals in Sweden were recruited to the Information Bureau as press officers (Larsson, 2005; SNA, n.d.).

Four to six times a year the Information Bureau arranged press meetings called Information Days that lasted an entire day. Here the foreign, justice and national economy ministers and sometimes the prime minister presented information about foreign affairs, the state of emergency and the supply situation. The information was confidential, which meant that the newspapers were well informed but had to keep quiet and to refrain from publishing what they knew (SNA, n.d.).

The Second World War and the extensive international media presence in Stockholm

During the war, Stockholm became a gathering point for international war correspondents. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs established a press room at the Grand Hotel, where most of the correspondents lived. The press room was staffed by a secretary from the ministry who dealt with accreditations and assisted the journalists with identity and ration cards, travel tickets, translators and housing. A number of translators arrived at the press room every morning to translate newspaper texts and other reports for the correspondents (SNA, n.d.).

Up to 140 correspondents used the Swedish capital as an observation post for reporting on the war, the British and American ones looking into central and eastern Europe and the German ones looking west. Almost all international news agencies and large newspapers, not least British and American ones, were strongly represented. Some exile journals were also represented. For 1 November 1944, to take an example, the accreditation board in the press room lists 134 names, among them 27 from Great Britain, 20 from the USA, 19 from Germany and 10 from Japan, together with 25–30 correspondents from 10 news agencies. Earlier in the war the German representation was much higher (Johannesson, 2007).

For these reporters (and for the Swedish press corps) the foreign ministry arranged more or less regular press conferences, with two separate sessions, one meeting for reporters from the axis countries and one for those coming from the allied and neutral countries. The same procedure was used for study trips organized by the ministry (SNA, n.d.; Johannesson, 2007). In terms of diplomacy, the government, well aware that the newspapers were being reviewed in the aggressor countries and their embassies, used media diplomacy alongside ordinary diplomacy.

The media environment in Stockholm became highly internationalized by all these visitors and the foreign correspondents became a distinctive feature of the social and cultural life of the city. Some obviously had a dual role, also being involved in ‘underground diplomacy’ and the intelligence activities that characterized the city during this period. Among the reporters were not only legendary war correspondents but also resistance refugees such as Willy Brandt and Bruno Kreisky, future prime ministers of Germany and Austria. Some reporters remained in Sweden for a long time after the war, and the press room continued operating for a year and a half after the armistice, not closing until late autumn 1946 (SNA, n.d.; Johannesson, 2007).

The post-war period

After the war, the government continued to arrange press conferences for the domestic press (and for the international correspondents staying in Sweden). Such conferences were normally held monthly or sometimes twice a month, and during the first peace years they mostly dealt with post-war matters such as how to handle all the refugees from especially the Baltic countries and what to do with German assets left in Sweden (SNA, n.d.).

In autumn 1946, just as the press room service for the international correspondents was being shut down, the Swedish prime minister of 14 years, Per Albin Hansson, collapsed and died on a tram on his way home from work. To replace him as cabinet leader, the somewhat unknown minister of education, Tage Erlander (a Social Democrat, like Hansson), was appointed, and he held the office for the next 23 years. He normally held one press conference a month with occasional gaps, often together with the foreign minister, mostly for a limited number of invited chief political editors. These conferences came to an end after the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1948, to prevent the communist press from gleaning any insights into the governmental affairs surrounding this international crisis. After a three-year hiatus, the press conferences were resumed (Labour Movement Archives/The Erlander Archives (LMA), n.d.).

Erlander’s conferences in the 1950s, held in the cabinet’s own meeting room, were solely off-the-record with the character of briefings (called ‘confidential’ in the invitation), or when meeting the editors of his ‘own’ press (the Social Democratic press), could also have a conversational and deliberative character (Erlander, 2001–10). In Goffman’s (1959) terms the government thus invited the press back stage and provided confidential information. The contacts with the press, especially Elander’s ‘own’ press, had the character of negotiations (cf. Ericson et al., 1989).

In 1953 Erlander recruited a young man to perform all kinds of secretarial duties, among them handling press contacts – Olof Palme. These two men, representing two generations and two different backgrounds, soon become a close team relying on and stimulating each other. They alone constituted the prime minister’s chancellery, apart from a female typist and a porter. Journalists had no problem directly phoning the PM or his secretary, or knocking on the porter’s door to be let in to see the him (interview with Ferm, 2010).

Ten years later (1963) the first press officer was appointed. He introduced a new form of press conference inspired by how president Kennedy conducted his press contacts. At these ‘gala’ conferences, arranged four times a year, the agenda was free and the press could ask the prime minister and a couple of other ministers whatever questions they wished. On the first occasion, 59 Swedish and 34 foreign newspapermen (all male) crowded into the prime minister’s meeting room, but unlike the American model, radio and television were not admitted (LMA, n.d.). These governmental ‘show programmes’, as the headline of a major newspaper dubbed the conference the next day (Dagens Nyheter, 1963) did not, however, work well from either the arranger’s or the media’s perspective. The press found them boring and unwieldy. After three years, and reduced to one conference a year, they were replaced by the previous format with the prime minister briefing smaller groups of editors and political reporters, normally once a month. At the last ‘gala’ conference, radio and television were allowed to record the session:

These grand press conferences were something new for Sweden; previously Erlander had only invited selected chief editors, mostly from the own party press … All questions were allowed, and several ministers attended to answer them, in Swedish, so those foreign reporters who did not speak the language had interpreters. They were very polite and respectful meetings, but took a long time because of all the presentations by the ministers. (interview with Bergqvist, 2010)

Olof Palme and the modern press conference

When Palme became prime minister in 1969, the press contacts changed considerably in form and appearance, both the organized group contacts and, especially, the more individual ones. He was ‘press minded’ – interested in having press contacts and enjoying them. He regularly, and on an almost daily basis, met journalists, often personally or by telephone, and often he himself made the call. In a sense he lived with the press. Journalists lined up to interview him. He appeared practically every day in newspapers, radio and television (Björk, 2008). A close relationship and interaction had thus emerged between the government and the press (cf. Gans, 1979; Sigal, 1973).

With Palme the modern press conference first appears in Sweden, with the prime minister calling for meetings with the press to deal with a specific political issue or deliver a statement, and with the gathered press, now mostly news reporters rather than political editors, responding with questions and interviews. He also began to have informal occasional meetings with the press corps after meetings and parliamentary sessions:

He was very informal. After meetings he’d stand there talking to the journalists, which so to speak was a kind of press conference. The more formal press conferences were connected to larger political events and questions and to problems of different kinds. Another type was formalized contacts with the Social Democratic press and its editors, of a more political character. (interview with Rollén, 2010)

Like his predecessor, Palme had a great deal of contact with the press on his travels around Sweden to meet and talk with local party members; this contact took the form of meetings with local reporters from the (few) local newspapers, local radio and regional television. These press meetings used to be planned by the local party chapter, but at the same time were natural and regular features of his visits around the country (Björk, 2008; interview with Rollén, 2010).

Palme was very internationally oriented. He travelled extensively abroad, not least to the third world, and was visited by many foreign leaders, especially those representing left-wing and developing countries (Östberg, 2011). In his period as prime minister, joint press conferences with foreign statesmen were thereby introduced. Meetings and negotiations with foreign leaders were followed by joint press conferences with them; diplomacy was followed by press and public diplomacy (cf. Gilboa, 2008; Kumar, 2005; Melissen, 2005).

Governmental turn and problematic press relations

The Swedish political playing field changed completely in 1976 when the Social Democratic Party and Olof Palme lost the election, making way for a non-socialist government for the first time since 1932. The new government was formed by the Conservative Party, Liberal Party and Centre Party, the last being the dominant coalition partner and its leader Fälldin becoming the new prime minister.

For the new cabinet leader, the relations with the press were more cautious and strained compared to his predecessor. Fälldin was less outgoing, called for few press conferences, and initiated few contacts with individual reporters. He also appeared to be more reluctant to talk with the press informally after meetings and parliamentary sessions, and was uncomfortable with being in the television spotlight. Compared to the previous term, fewer press sessions with an international agenda were arranged because of his focus on domestic politics (Fälldin, 1998; interview with Fälldin, 2009)

Some of Fälldin’s conferences, however, did make history. At his very first press meeting as the new prime minister, he declared that the other parties in the government coalition had forced him to open a new nuclear power plant, violating his most important electoral promise. The other came when he resigned, again over the nuclear power issue (For a short period a Liberal Party minority government replaced him and his party). The third and perhaps most serious press conference ever for a Swedish prime minister took place during his second mandate period, when a nuclear-armed Soviet submarine ran aground close to shore right in the main Swedish naval port; some minutes before the conference he had ordered the supreme commander ‘to hold the border’ when other Soviet ships were approaching:

The pressroom was crowded with people and I started by saying we were fairly certain that the submarine had nuclear weapons. They (the journalists) were on pins and needles and went totally quiet. It was such a shock, the atomic weapons, and they didn’t get to ask any questions … But one reporter in the back rows understood the news value and took off. Then the others recovered and left to file their reports. … It was, without exception, the most tense situation I have ever experienced. (interview with Fälldin, 2009).

New forms of press meetings in the 1980s

In the 1982 election a new political shift occurred, reinstating Palme as prime minister. In this later period of his career, group contacts in the form of press conferences increased compared to previously, as the demands from journalists for individual interviews became too burdensome (Björk, 2008).

When Palme was murdered in 1986, Ingvar Carlsson, another of ‘Erlander’s boys’, was elected the new leader of the Social Democratic Party and prime minister. He was more restrictive with his press relations, not in terms of the number of conferences, but in closeness to the press. On the other side, informal and spontaneous meetings with the press corps after e.g. parliamentary sessions became more and more common, alongside the ordinary press conferences in the government’s press room:

We held [ordinary] press conferences when there was some important issue, when we presented an important bill, when there were cabinet changes, when we had party leader negotiations, or when we were visited by foreign statesmen … But one could say that we had impromptu press meetings, as the press gathered before me wherever I appeared, constant ‘standing’ press conferences actually. (interview with Carlsson, 2010)

From the latter part of the 1980s it thus became ever more common for there to be occasional meetings with the assembled press corps when the prime minister attended different events or appeared in parliament. The usual routine here was for the journalists to catch up with the prime minister in the hall just outside the chamber after a debate or information session, stand close to him with their microphones, and ask questions both about what was discussed in the chamber but also – and often most important for them – other relevant issues of the day (interview with Lindstrand, 2010).

The last 20 years – shifting governments

In the last 20 years Sweden has passed through five governmental mandate terms with four prime ministers. Two of these governments were social democratic and two centre-right, with one of the social democratic prime ministers holding power during two terms.

In 1991 the Social Democratic Party again lost the election, and were replaced by a conservative-led centre-right government headed by Carl Bildt. Prime minister Bildt had the same international focus as Palme, but faced several severe domestic problems, among them economic ones. He also turned out to be as press minded as Palme, liking to meet and deal with journalists, but not hesitating to correct and reprimand them. Most of his press conferences were held together with visiting statesmen and were of a diplomatic character (cf. Gilboa, 2008).

In the next election the political landscape switched again, reinstating the Social Democratic Party in government with Ingvar Carlsson as prime minister. However, after two years he decided to resign, leaving the post to Göran Persson, who then continued as prime minister for 10 years. Like some of his predecessors, he maintained close relations with the press through ongoing press contacts, though he had no contact by himself with individual journalists. The system of impromptu press meetings wherever he showed up had now become almost a daily scenario.

For me press conferences were very pleasant [events], and they belonged to the everyday life of a prime minister … Not only the planned and organized ones in the controlled environment at Rosenbad [the prime minister’s ministry] but also, and mostly, the casual and spontaneous ones, for example standing outside the parliamentary chamber with the press after a debate or question session. (interview with Persson, 2011)

Though the media for long has been an important way of communicating with the citizens, Persson means, together with his press secretary Larsson (interviews with Persson, 2011, and Larsson, 2010) that, overall, the mediated way has become even more important during the last 20 years, not least as the media landscape developed with more media formats and channels. The political actors in government devote more and more time to media adjusting and media relations (cf. Bennett and Entman, 2001; Davis, 2007).

After the Conservative Party, together with the other three non-socialist parties, once again took power in 2006, a partly new style of press relations was introduced. Besides the traditional conferences at Rosenbad, the four party leaders/ministers regularly held press conferences together at different locations such as factories, schools and railway stations, or even in the gardens of their private homes, to present and promote current political issues concerning schools, etc. Furthermore, the departmental ministries altogether arranged many more press conferences than in previous terms, especially the educational and social ministries, perhaps because of the need of the four parties and their ministers to attract their own media attention and publicity.

A closer look at the last 20 years

For the last 20 years, from 1992 onwards, the Swedish government’s press conferences have been specifically registered at the Government Archives (GA, 1993–2006, 2006–10) and later archived at the SNA; previously no such records were kept. The records contain data about dates, places, topics and participants.

To start with the context, the entire government (all ministries) have arranged in total 2750 press conferences 1992–2011. Most of these have been carried out by its foreign, social, justice, finance and education ministries, together with the ministry for industry, energy and communications, with over 300 conferences each. One-third of the conferences consist of presentations of reports and investigations, while another third deal with information about decisions and new bills, or briefings about different items of business being dealt with in the ministries (Eriksson et al., 2012).

Narrowing the scope to the central ministry, 440 ordinary/regular press conferences were arranged at the Prime Minister’s Office from 1992 to 2011, an average of 22 conferences per year. The frequency of these conferences varies considerably over the years, from around 10 meetings/year for a few years in the 1990s to over 40 meetings in 2001 and 2009. The beginning of each mandate period, as well as the last year of each (election years), shows a higher frequency of conferences than the years in between. Not surprisingly, more conferences are arranged when the Swedish prime minister holds the chairmanship of the European Union (EU). The number and division of the conferences is described in Table 1.

Table 1.

Press conferences at the Prime Minister’s Office 1992–2011

The number of press conferences differs to a certain extent between governments and governmental terms. But it can also be considered a development over time during the last 20 years. In terms of the number of press conferences per month, a slight increase can be noted for this period. Table 2 presents the number of conferences per month.

Table 2.

Press conferences per government term and month

Period*	Government	Conferences per month
1991–1994	Centre-right	1.6
1994–2006	Social democratic	1.7
2006–2011	Centre-right	2.0

New governments coming to power in October 1991, 1994, 2006

TS: Please align numbers on unit/decimal point in all tables, where applicable

More precisely, the first centre-right government held 1.6 press conferences per month on average, the social democratic (three terms) governments in the intervening period stand for 1.7 conferences per month, while the current centre-right government holds 2.0 conferences per month. Excluding the atypical years when Sweden has chaired the EU (2001 and 2009), we find that the average number of conferences per month is almost the same, only having increased from 1.6 to 1.7 during the period.

Governmental press conferences differ in character and type – they can provide information about decisions taken and about bills sent to parliament, they can include an official statement on an international event, or they can be briefings on questions the government is working on. Table 3 shows the division of types:

Table 3.

Type of press conference, Prime Minister’s Office 1992–2011

Type	Frequency	Percent
Foreign leader visits	178	40
Briefings	75	17
Presentation reports/commissions	37	8
Information on decisions/bills	29	7
Statements	23	5
Crisis issues	22	5
Government/Parliament strategy	21	5
Seminars at the ministry	20	5
Type not clarified	35	8
Total	440	100

Visits by foreign leaders, most of them heads of state, constitute the most frequent type of the press conferences at the Prime Minister’s Office. Briefings are the second most frequent type, in most cases concerning EU matters, for example informing the media about how the government will deal with questions in the EU machinery. Third come presentations of reports and findings of commissions, mostly concerning domestic questions. A fourth type is information on decisions taken, also mostly about domestic questions and the economy. The other types – crisis issues, statements (brief reactions to important, mostly international events), crisis issues, strategy declarations on how to deal with parliamentary issues, and press meetings in connection with governmental seminars – are less frequent types representing every 20th case each.

Most of the sessions with foreign dignitaries are joint conferences – sessions held together with a visiting foreign president/prime minister or United Nations (UN)/EU/Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) leader, etc. They display a low adversarial character as in the USA (cf. Kumar, 2007; Banning and Billingsley, 2007). Not surprisingly, a large number of the visits by foreign leaders, as well as most briefings, take place in 2001 and 2009, the years when Sweden held the chairmanship of the EU.

Sessions to address crises are primarily connected with major international and domestic crises, e.g. the Estonia shipwreck (1994), the Gothenburg fire (1996), the terror attacks in the USA (2001) and Europe (2003–04), the murder of the Swedish foreign minister (2003) and the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami (2004–05).

A comparison with other departments/ministries shows that these ministries arrange many more conferences presenting decisions, reports, presentation and briefings; 75 percent of their conferences are of this type, compared to 30 percent at the prime ministry.

What do the press conferences held by the Prime Minister’s Office deal with? What topics are brought up at these sessions? Table 4 presents a breakdown of the 440 conferences.

Table 4.

Press conference main topics, Prime Minister’s Office 1992–2011

Subject	Frequency	Percent
Foreign affairs/relations	188	43
EU-= questions	97	22
Domestic politics, economy	83	19
Industry, including communications	19	4
Environmental questions	6	1
Education/social questions	5	1
Defence	3	1
Other areas/topics	21	5
Subject not noted	18	4
Total	440	100

Two thirds of the total number of conferences are about foreign policy and EU topics, most of them conducted with foreign leaders on a visit. Domestic political and economic issues, including administrative items have been the topic of one out of six conferences. Except for some 20 industrial, infrastructural, and environmental cases, the central government hardly ever calls the press for sectoral matters. Accordingly, very few sessions at the prime ministry deal with educational, social and cultural questions; these are mostly matters for the responsible government departments and their ministers. Other less frequent topics are issues of migration, gender/equality and IT/telecoms. Eighty of 440 press conferences had two or more subjects on the agenda, mostly combinations of EU affairs and environmental/global-warming questions.

Who are the actors at the press conferences at the Prime Minister’s Office? Apart from the prime minister, other ministers, as well as secretaries and officials, have hosted the sessions. The type of actors heading the conferences are illustrated in Table 5.

Table 5.

Actors heading the Prime Minister’s Office press conferences

Actor heading the conference	Frequency	Percent
Prime ministers	325	74
Department ministers	49	11
Political and press secretaries	32	7
Officials, commissioners	23	5
Others/actor not noted	11	3
Total	440	100

Eight out of 10 press conferences at the prime ministry are headed and hosted by a minister, mostly the prime minister who has chaired the sessions in seven out of ten cases. Political and press secretaries, together with department officials and other officials, stand for most of the remaining sessions. At a minority of the conferences (one out of four) one single person took the stage; mostly this was the prime minister himself but it could also be a departmental minister or an official.

At most conferences, three out of four, other actors than the heading person have participated, often also acting as spokespersons. Visiting foreign leaders have participated in 179 sessions, departmental ministers in a total of 124 sessions, and officials in 88 sessions. At nearly every second session the media has met two actors. Up to five persons have appeared, on rare occasions even more. At 17 percent of the events four or more actors have participated in the press conferences at the prime ministry, a common pattern for the most recent government (2006–11), all four of whose party leaders often share the stage.

The four actor categories have different tasks and responsibilities in the sense that they responsible for different types of press conferences. The distribution of roles is illustrated in Table 6.

Table 6.

Actor heading the Prime Minister’s Office press conferences, arranged by type of conference, percent

Actors:	Prime ministers	Department ministers	Secretaries/officials*	Total
Type
Foreign leader visits	174	4	0	178
Briefings	27	13	35	75
Presentation of reports	12	14	11	37
Information on decisions	24	5	0	29
Statements	19	4	0	23
Crisis issues	22	0	0	22
Government/Parliament strategy	20	1	0	21
Seminars at the ministry	9	5	6	20
Type not specified	18	3	14**	35
Total	325	49	66	440

Inclusive other actors (10), mostly other politicians.

For five sessions actor(s) not noted.

The prime minister is responsible for almost all press conferences with foreign guests and he (all four prime ministers during the period studied are men) is also the one who stands for sessions dealing with information about government decisions and political strategy together with all prepared statements and crisis issues. Holding briefings and presenting reports are, on the other hand, mostly tasks for press and political secretaries together with officials. When such reports are presented, ministers seldom participate.

A comparison with press conferences at the other (departmental) ministries shows that departmental ministers participate to a lesser degree (57 percent) than the prime minister at the sessions at the prime ministry, while officials participate to a higher degree (32 percent) compared with the ones at Rosenbad, mostly when presenting reports and the findings of government commissions (Eriksson et al., 2012)

1920–2010 summarized

The history of the Swedish government’s press meetings reveals a development from there being very few meetings, occasional and off-the-record, to an ongoing government–media relationship with up to 40 ordinary press conferences being arranged at the Prime Minister’s Office every year, plus a number of impromptu meetings with the press corps when the national leader shows up at different events, etc. The development of the government’s press meetings can be summed up in Table 7.

Table 7.

The Swedish governments press contacts 1920–2010 at the Prime Minister’s Office

Period	Government	Prime Minister	Number of conferences per year	Type and character of press conferences
1920–32	Changing, 1–2-year mandate periods	10 names	0–1	Governmental issues/crises, scandals, in casual meetings with media leaders
1932–39	Social Democratic (1936–39 with Centre party)	Hansson	1–2	Major political/social questions, with a limited number of chief editors
1939–46	Coalition all parties except Communists	Hansson	5–8	War issues, domestic consequences, with chief editors and international reporters
1946–69	Social Democratic	Erlander	8–12	Presenting/discussing current matters, with chief editors or ‘own’ editors
1963–66	ditto	ditto	2–4	‘Gala’ conferences with all media including international correspondents
1969–76	Social Democratic.	Palme	12–15	Promoting current political matters, now with news and radio/TV reporters. Numerous interviews by individual reporters
1976–82	Centre-liberal-conservatives	Fälldin	8–10	Irregular conferences, several about crises. Many local press meetings on the road
1982–86	Social Democratic	Palme	12–15	Promoting political matters and proposals. Conferences with foreign leaders
1986–91	Social Democratic (plus 1994–96)	Carlsson	15-20	Domestic issues, economy, gov. changes. Emerging informal press meetings
1991–94	Conservative-centre-liberal government	Bildt	15–20	National problematic issues, economy. More conferences with foreign leaders
1996–2006	Social Democratic	Persson	15–20(45)	Increasing no of informal press conferences. Frequent conferences as EU chairman
2006–10	Conservative-centre- liberal government	Reinfeldt	15–25(40)	Four-party-leader press conferences. Conferences at strategic sites outside Office

Conclusions and discussion

Press conferences are an important way for the Swedish national political leaders to communicate with the media and the public, just as Kumar has found for the US government, claiming that such events are ‘part of the foundation of democratic government’ (Kumar, 2007: 255). The importance of formal, regular press conferences can, however, in relative terms be regarded as having diminished, as the government nowadays also meets the press on many informal occasions and furthermore uses several new channels to reach the press and the public.

Central factors influencing the development of government press conferences are, thus, on the government side, the political importance of going public and receiving publicity, together with a growing number of government activities and matters. On the media and journalistic side, central factors are the development of the media and changes in reporting work.

However, the development of governmental press conferences does not strictly follow the development of the media and the quantitative and qualitative development of PR. Another factor also appears to be important, what can be called the personal state leader factor. Swedish prime ministers have throughout history shown rather varied levels of interest in holding meetings with the press, at least up to the 1990s (cf. Eshbaugh-Soha, 2003 for the USA).

In Sweden, government press conferences are a rather recent phenomenon, especially compared to the USA and Germany. Before the Second World War the prime ministers arranged just a small number of press meetings. During the war, Stockholm became a centre for international journalists reporting on the war, resulting in recurrent press conferences from the government’s side as well as the installation at the government’s behalf of a press room at the hotel where many correspondents lived (for long periods), providing different forms of service. In the post-war period, the prime minister gave approximately a dozen conferences a year, off-the-record, most with selected editors-in-chief and presenting current government affairs. With Olof Palme, who took over the office at the end of the 1960s, the modern press conference came to consist of conferences for news reporters where the government promotes political questions or is held to account for some current issue.

Turning to the last decades the Prime Minister and his office conducted 440 ordinary press conferences between 1992 and 2011. Significant differences can be noted, with rather few sessions being arranged in the ‘middle’ years of the governmental terms, while more than 40 sessions were arranged in the years when the Swedish prime minister held the EU chairmanship.

One might expect that election years would result in more press meetings than normal, as incumbent governments seek publicity ahead of the election. However, there is no consistent evidence for this presumption; it occurred in only two of the election years during the period studied (1994 and 2002, but not 1998 and 2006).

A comparison with Kumar’s extensive studies of US presidential press conferences shows similarities in frequency but also in some format aspects (Kumar, 2005, 2007). President Clinton and G.W. Bush, as well as Obama from 2009 to 2011 (Kumar, 2011), thus gave on average around 25 conferences per year, which is close to the average, 22 sessions per year, for the Prime Minister’s Office in Sweden (the prime minister himself, however, gave 16 regular conferences per year on average).

Another similarity is the design of holding joint conferences with visiting top politicians. These are, however, more frequent in the USA. While 72 percent of the US sessions are joint sessions, the corresponding figure for Sweden is 43 percent. Kumar claims that such sessions should be seen as a strategy to reduce the president’s vulnerability at his meetings with the press and soften the aggressive climate. The same cannot so easily be said of Sweden, where the reason for joint sessions is more to draw media and public attention to the visit of an important foreign visitor. These sessions can, however, to some degree be expected to have a less critical and questioning character than other sessions, resembling the situation in the USA (cf. Banning and Billingsley, 2007). Unlike both the USA and England, however, the Swedish government does not give daily briefings by press officers about the daily agenda and programme.

In the 1950s–60s, press conferences were held in the cabinet’s small meeting room close to the prime minister’s personal study, but since the beginning of the 1980s they are held in the press centre located in the lobby of the building housing the Prime Minister’s Office. In terms of the stage model of Ericson et al. (1989), based on Goffman’s (1959) stage concept, the meetings with the press in the first case took place back stage, while today they take place front stage. According to the model, information provided back stage is confidential, or off-the-record, while front-stage information is open and cleared for publicity. In the 1970s, Olof Palme, however, invited the press to receive open information in the chancellery, transforming it into a front-stage milieu.

The relationship can be regarded as cooperative and characterized by close interacting, at least since the 1970s, just as it is described in many international studies (e.g. Blumler and Gurevitch, 1981; Sigal, 1973). The governmental actors constantly deal with the (same) journalists, not only in press meetings and interviews, but also in various other places where they occasionally meet and talk to them. Their relationship is to a large degree characterized by the exchange or negotiations of information, in line with exchange and negotiation theory (see e.g. Ericson et al., 1989; Davis, 2010: 73).

The Swedish government’s press conferences are of several types. Apart from those held with foreign visitors, one in five conferences can be characterized as ‘fact giving’ sessions (for instance providing information about decisions and bills, and presenting reports) and one in five can be characterized as handling ‘ongoing’ questions (such as briefings and declarations on how to deal with issues in parliament). Reports and inquiries are mostly presented by officials, and briefings are often conducted by political or press secretaries, as is also the custom at in the UK at 10 Downing Street (cf. Cockerell et al., 1984).

The conferences are mostly arranged to deal with a specific theme and the announcement takes up a defined question; there are very few general sessions where all kinds of questions may be discussed (apart from questions from individual reporters after a session). Concerning the agenda for these meetings with the press, foreign affairs, together with EU matters, are, as seen above, highly predominant; two thirds of all sessions deal with these themes. When foreign/state and UN/EU leaders visit the country, the prime minister hosts the sessions, not the foreign minister (though he participates at some of these sessions). Domestic questions including the economy and defence stand for one fifth of the sessions.

Most conferences at the Prime Minister’s Office (66%) are thus about foreign affairs and often are attended by foreign leaders. This means that the prime minister often deals with media diplomacy and public diplomacy, using the media in their foreign affairs by communicating with foreign publics to generate understanding for the nation’s ideas and ideals (cf. Gilboa, 2008; L’Etang, 2010; Melissen, 2005). Similarly, the foreign minister deals with diplomatic activities in his press conferences. Actually the efforts to promote the own nation’s ideas can be aimed not only at foreign media and publics but also at the domestic general public, not least groups interested in foreign affairs (cf. Cohen, 1986).

In general, the government interest in press conferences has been at the same level since the 1970s, even though the number of ordinary conferences has varied through the years (with low frequency in middle terms and peaks in EU-chairing years) and has also varied because of the personal factor, in the sense that prime ministers throughout history have displayed varying relationships to the media and different ways and manners of meeting with journalists. But when we also consider the development of more informal and occasional meetings the conclusion is that the relationship between the government and the media has grown increasingly since the late 1980s.

Altogether, the contacts with the assembled press have increased during the last two decades, taking into account that the contacts take other forms than merely the organised ones. Prime ministers talk to journalists in informal and spontaneous meetings in different situations: in parliament after debates, at conferences, and when travelling – meetings that are not planned but are nevertheless expected by both sides and therefore must be regarded as a form of press conference. The result is that the head of state sees the press constantly. To this come all the contacts via new forms of media and social networking services. This variegated system of contacts also entails that the organized conferences have diminished in importance to some extent, as the media is also supplied with information in other ways. On the other side, journalists continue to show up at the conferences, most likely because they will get their own exclusive statements from the minister.

Press conferences consist of two elements – on the one side, the government providing information and promoting various political matters, and, on the other side, the media performing their scrutiny and accountability tasks. In this study, only in about one tenth of the cases from 1992 to 2011 can the journalists can be regarded as fulfilling their accountability duty, mostly on occasions of meetings connected with problematic issues and crisis. From a journalistic perspective, the ideal of the Fourth Estate with its watchdog role is only weakly upheld, an assessment confirmed by several analysts, for instance Gans (2010: 98), who claim that watchdog contributions are rare, and Hampton who concludes that ‘journalism has significant practical limitations as a Fourth Estate’ (Hampton, 2010: 10).

Press conferences are thus the politician’s arena. To a great extent it is they who control the relationship when it comes to the regularly held conferences. In most cases, it is they who summon the sessions, decide what to inform about, control the provision of information, and steer the interaction. In conceptual terms, the politicians are agenda builders (cf. Cobb and Elder, 1972) and primary definers (cf. Hall et al., 1993[1978]). The journalists at the conferences do ask questions that can be of an accountability and critical character, but new studies show that the inquisitive attitude is nowadays often is rather downplayed (Eriksson et al., 2012). Furthermore the journalists and editors can exert power in the later news process (cf. Strömbäck and Nord, 2006), as they can reject the politician’s message or slant it in an unintended way. But even if the informal press meetings tend to be less dominated by the political side and even if the journalists may haphazardly function as scrutinizers, the politicians must be seen as being in control of the relationship in general.

A central theme in political communication research is the growing medialization or mediazation of politics and power (see e.g. Bennett and Entman, 2001; Davis, 2007; Louw, 2005). As a final conclusion, this study finds a similar trend, in the sense that the government’s contacts with the media have increased during the last two decades, especially in that the more informal contacts in particular have grown in frequency to a point where politicians and the press meet almost every day in one form or another. Furthermore, the government, as noted above, increasingly uses new forms of media directed at both the traditional media and the public, such as when the current foreign minister tweets daily about foreign and other affairs. The intensified media work by the government can also be seen in its increased hiring of media strategists, press officers and other news management actors; while the prime ministers in the 1970s–80s had one press secretary, the present prime minister is surrounded by three press agents plus two information officials. The result is a continuous development of PR and press resources, producing an intense diffusion and propagation of ideas for news items, in a deepened medialization.

Footnotes

Author biography

Larsåke Larsson, PhD, is Professor of Media and Communication Science at Örebro University, Sweden. He received his PhD in Journalism from Gothenburg University. His research is within the fields of journalism, public relations and crisis communication. He has contributed to several books, among them The Routledge Companion to News and Journalism (Routledge, 2010), The Handbook of Crisis Communication (2010, Blackwell), Public Relations Cases (Moss and DeSanto (eds), 2002, Routledge) and Public Relations: Critical Debates and Contemporary Practice (L’Etang and Pieczka (eds), 2006, LEA), together with encyclopedia contributions. He has published articles in Journalism Studies, Journal of Communication Management and Nordicom Review. In Opinionsmakarna (The Opinion Makers) he reported the result of a larger Swedish PR research project. Another research project about political press relations has recently been published in Politikernas Arena (The Politicians’ Arena). Dr Larsson has also carried out research about most severe crisis situations for Sweden, among them the Estonia wreck, the Gothenburg fire, 9/11, the murder of a foreign minister and the tsunami followed by a severe hurricane in 2004/05. He has published several Swedish academic textbooks in public relations and crisis communication.

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