I covered my first US presidential election in 1992, when Bill Clinton defeated George H.W. Bush, and has since followed all presidential elections. When I compare the American development with the Swedish election campaign in 2026, I am struck by the fact that we have created almost opposite problems.
In the United States, the presidential candidates can choose too much which journalists and platforms they want to meet. In Sweden, instead, each major editorial office seems to consider that it must conduct its own party leader hearing.
SVT conducts eight individual hearings. TV4 makes eight of its own, where each call can last up to three hours. Sveriges Radio allows the same party leader to meet several newsrooms and programs: Ekot/P1 Morgon, P4 Extra and Morgonpasset in P3 each have their own series, while Klartext has another format. Added to this are the newspaper interviews, podcasts and other ventures.
And then the debates. SVT, Sveriges Radio, TV4 and other media houses arrange their own major party leader debates.
The comparison with the United States is thought-provoking. During the 2024 presidential election, two debates between presidential candidates were held. Donald Trump met Joe Biden in June and, after Biden left the presidential race, Kamala Harris in September. Harris thus participated in a single presidential debate as the Democratic candidate and Trump in two.
This does not mean that the American model is better. On the contrary, during the more than three decades I have followed the election campaigns, the candidates have gained more and more control over their media exposure.
The classic journalistic hearing has received competition from podcasts and talk shows where the candidates can largely choose both the interviewer and the audience.
Donald Trump sat in 2024 for nearly three hours with Joe Rogan and appeared in a number of other podcasts. Kamala Harris was interviewed by, among others, 60 Minutes and Fox News, but also by Howard Stern, The View and the podcast "Call her daddy".
There are obvious problems with this. Politicians can choose sympathetic interviewers and avoid the scrutiny they prefer to avoid. The Swedish tradition, where the party leader accepts the editor's questions and conditions, is therefore worth defending.
But there is a lesson from the US: the interviews are actually different. They reach different groups and start from different ideas about what the audience needs to know. In Sweden, we instead risk getting a diversity of programs without a corresponding diversity in journalism.
For each editor, the decision is understandable. No editor-in-chief or program director wants to explain why the competitor is allowed to interview the prime minister or the opposition leader while their own editorial team refrains. But when everyone makes the same rational choice, a reasonable question arises: What does the eighth longer interview with a party leader add that the third could not?
When the same questions are asked again and again, not only the party leader has heard them before. It also has communications managers, press secretaries and political advisers. The answers have been tested, the objections anticipated and the wording refined. What from the editor's perspective is yet another critical hearing can, from the politician's perspective, become yet another well-prepared campaign appearance.
More party leader interviews simply do not necessarily equate to more political scrutiny.
There is also an opportunity cost. Any ambitious hearing requires research, fact-checking, reporters, producers, editors and presenters. Multiplied by eight party leaders and a large number of newsrooms, it is a matter of considerable journalistic resources.
In Sweden, we instead risk getting a diversity of programs without a corresponding diversity in journalism.
Imagine if some of them were instead used to check election promises, scrutinize financial calculations, follow the money and examine the results of already implemented policies - journalism that finds out things that the party leader and his staff do not yet have a written answer for.
I am not suggesting that the party leader hearing should be abolished. But we should be able to demand more of ourselves than everyone doing their version of roughly the same program.
Four changes could make for better election journalism:
* Fewer standard hearings. Whoever conducts another comprehensive interview should be able to explain what it adds that the voters have not already been told.
* Clearer difference between the formats. SVT, TV4, Sveriges Radio and the newspapers do not have to do their own versions of the same interview - the point of many newsrooms should be that they contribute different journalism.
* More review, less repetition. Shift resources from further interviews to fact-checking, financial review and follow-up on previous election promises.
* Fewer but better debates. Fewer and more thematic meetings would give more room for follow-up questions, deepening and fact-checking.
The quality of journalism cannot be measured in how many hours the country's most media-trained people are in front of a camera or microphone.
After the election, the big media houses should also evaluate their own coverage. How many longer party leader interviews and debates were conducted? How much did the content differ? And how much did voters actually gain new knowledge?
After more than three decades of US presidential elections, I see clearly the dangers of letting politicians opt out of the journalism they don't want to face. Sweden should not imitate that model. But we should also not assume that the Swedish opposite is automatically better.
The quality of journalism cannot be measured in how many hours the country's most media-trained people are in front of a camera or microphone. It must be measured by how much voters know afterwards that they did not know before.
