Q&A: Magnus Hjort
...Director at the Secretariat for Research and Strategic Analysis at the Swedish Emergency Management Agency, who has commissioned the report "The Roundabout Dog and the Freedom of Speech - A Study of Nerikes Allehanda's publication: Justifications, Reactions and Dialogue."
The Swedish Emergency Management Agency is responsible for the "development of emergency management capabilities and knowledge about threats, risks, and vulnerabilities." Why is it your responsibility to commission an assessment of the news reporting about events around the publication of Lars Vilk's Mohammed drawings?
"This was an incident that could have developed into a crisis and the Danish crisis was fresh in our memory, when Jyllands-Posten published its Mohammed caricatures. At that time, several hundred people died in riots in Nigeria, for example, and a boycott against the company Arla was organized. For this reason, it was interesting for the Swedish Emergency Management Agency to look more closely at this incident."
What type of crisis do you want to be prepared for?
"For how local events can have global consequences. This is about creating a greater understanding of how communication works and how what one writes can have effects in ways one cannot imagine at the offset. We work in a wide variety of ways to be able to manage all types of crises. One question one could ask is what made the incidents in Sweden develop differently from the ones in Denmark."
Have you drawn any conclusions from the results you have encountered in the report?
"We have not yet had time to analyze the specific results of the report, but we can say more generally that dialogue is better than confrontation. Prime Minister Reinfeldt acted correctly when he explained that the government could not censure newspapers, but that we at the same time respect other religions. The Danes were worse equipped because they had no previous experience of a similar situation."
This article was first published in 20081104. The Swedish version here.