Foreword
Nordicom has been part of Nordic cooperation for more than fifty years. The organisation is therefore only a few years younger than the introduction of the first direct subsidies for Nordic news media. This is no coincidence. The implementation of direct media support created an entirely new need for research-based knowledge about the media landscapes of the Nordic countries.
The design, scope, and consequences of direct media subsidies have, throughout these decades, been recurring themes in books and scholarly articles published by Nordicom. In this report, however, attention is directed towards a somewhat different aspect of the Nordic subsidy systems: decision-making processes and the principle of arm’s length governance.
The idea that political decisions should be limited to establishing the overarching conditions for artistic, cultural, and journalistic activity – without influencing content – is broadly accepted across the Nordic region. Even so, the ways in which the Nordic countries implement this principle differ more than one might initially assume. Some countries rely, for example, on separate bodies to make decisions regarding the allocation of support, thereby ensuring the desired distance through organisational design. Others have refrained from such arrangements for precisely the same reason – to safeguard the arm’s length principle.
With this report, we have sought to collect, synthesise, and disseminate knowledge about how the arm’s length principle is applied in practice within Nordic media-subsidy legislation in force at the beginning of 2026.
Jonas Ohlsson, director, Nordicom