It has long been an open question whether DR — Denmark’s tax-funded public service broadcaster — still lives up to its mandate of independent and balanced journalism. That is why the proposal in the new media agreement to examine DR’s political bias attracted significant political attention. In the wake of a series of concrete controversies, parties from the centre-right summoned Culture Minister Jakob Engel-Schmidt for a parliamentary hearing to explain how such an investigation would be designed.
Yet even before the investigation has been formulated, the minister made one thing unmistakably clear: he expects — indeed, all but predicts — that it will vindicate DR. This is a remarkable pre-judgment from a minister who should serve as a neutral guarantor of genuine oversight of Denmark’s most powerful state media institution. When a minister signals that he already knows the outcome before any work has begun, the process ceases to be an independent examination and becomes a political exoneration dressed up as due diligence.
At the same time, Engel-Schmidt insists that the investigation must be confined solely to DR’s “journalistic output”. In doing so, he places large parts of the organisation’s editorial culture — including children’s and youth programming (Ultra, Ramasjang and Minisjang), cultural output, hiring practices, thematic priorities and programme development — entirely beyond scrutiny. Yet these are precisely the areas where many critics experience DR’s left-leaning tendencies most strongly. If the minister only wishes to investigate DR in the parts of the organisation DR itself feels safest, then he is not commissioning an investigation. He is commissioning a whitewash.
Why the hearing was called in the first place
The background to the hearing was entirely concrete: a number of highly publicised controversies that raised questions about DR’s political orientation. These included a widely criticised documentary on Greenland, internal unrest over DR employees participating in a Gaza-related signature campaign, and public concern surrounding specific editorial appointments. These were not abstract worries but current, documented cases which — according to the media journal Journalisten — prompted centre-right parties to demand clarity on how the government intends to ensure neutrality in a state-funded media organisation that, year after year, is dogged by accusations of political bias.
It was these real and specific incidents that made a thorough investigation not only legitimate, but necessary. They signalled that DR’s problems may not be isolated lapses but part of a broader pattern — a culture, an ideological orientation — influencing the institution at a structural level.
An investigation with a blindfold
That the minister, under these circumstances, chooses both to limit the scope of the investigation and to predict its conclusion is not merely unfortunate. It is institutionally corrosive. An investigation that is not permitted to examine the very issues that gave rise to the criticism is worthless. It is politically managed, not evidence-driven.
If DR were truly as balanced as Engel-Schmidt claims, it should be entirely risk-free to subject the entire organisation to a comprehensive, in-depth review. The opposite — narrowing, controlling and pre-defining the scope — is not neutrality. It is fear. Or a prearranged outcome.
DR’s crisis of legitimacy is real — and the parallel to the BBC is unmistakable
DR has for years drifted away from its public service foundations and towards a tax-funded propaganda machine — a provincial mini-BBC, merely without the British polish. And the BBC scandal is not a British quirk. It is a warning. When major public broadcasters ignore criticism, reject self-reflection and entrench internal ideological preferences, the crisis eventually comes. The BBC is now facing its gravest credibility collapse in decades precisely because it refused to act on warnings when it mattered.
DR is not yet in the same position — but the trajectory is recognisable. And the culture minister’s preordained approach does nothing to reduce the risk. Quite the opposite: he prevents an honest diagnosis and insists the patient is healthy before a single test has been taken.
The only defensible solution
If the investigation is to have any political, journalistic or democratic value, it must examine the whole of DR:
its journalism, children’s and youth programming, cultural output, coverage of international conflicts, editorial priorities, hiring practices and internal self-understanding. All of it. Not only the areas where DR feels comfortable.
Anything less is hypocrisy. And in this case, it is state-sanctioned hypocrisy promoted by a dubious culture minister.
