Aftonbladet has now also noticed that an English-language AFP newsfeed about Swedish news published on Sweden.se contained a story which names the [now ex-] chief suspect in Anna Lindh’s murderRecap: In Sweden, voluntary press ethics rules prohibit the naming of suspects, including the the name of the suspect held in connection with Swedish Foreign Minister Anna Lindh’s murder.
 
Update 16.30 CET: Svensson is released, and no longer under suspicion for Anna Lindh’s murder. A new suspect is arrested.. For an ostensibly straight news article, it is quite drenched in editorial innuendo. It is also unintentionally funny in that it never mentions the website, the government agency responsible, or the name of the person interviewed. At this rate, there won’t be much left to name soon.

Aftonbladet draws all the wrong conclusions. It should have concluded that trying to keep foreign media out of Sweden is like trying to bail the Titanic. Information flows are now so deeply integrated across borders that country-specific self-censorship rules based on a time before the internet are impossible to implement without severely disrupting the free flow of information.

Instead, Aftonbladet has concluded that because it follows — technically — a voluntary code of press ethics, everybody else should too, internet be damned. Nevermind that the Swedish Institute (SI) is not an accredited news organization. Nevermind that AFP is a foreign news organization. Nevermind that the rules, again, are voluntary. And certainly nevermind that Aftonbladet is the paper most responsible for smearing suspect Svensson’s reputation with irrelevant sensationalism.

In a way, it is understandable that Aftonbladet does not want to suffer competitively for this self-censorship (even if it has profited handsomely by being the most aggressive dirt digger). But because there is no legal basis for the enforcement of these ethics rules on non-journalistic entities and foreign media, the paper has had to appeal to a sense of moral outrage to try to get these organizations to fall into line. The article itself makes clear that Aftonbladet was willing to tolerate one transgression on the part of SI, especially as the offending article was manually removed, but decided to “out” the agency after the feed was automatically updated overnight by AFP, and the article reappeared. Straight news?

A more cynical reading of the paper’s actions would be this: Now that Svensson’s private life has been effectively exposed by Aftonbladet, and it is beginning to feel the heat for its editorial decisions, organizations that name the suspect in completely legitimate articles become welcome scapegoats.

Or how about this reading: By trying to expand the reach of these rules, through moral suasion, to non-traditional news outlets, Aftonbladet is doing its part to preserve the existence of a cozy, uncompetitive Swedish media landscape. In other words, what Aftonbladet is really saying in the article is, “how dare a foreign entity like AFP report our news back at us through non-standard channels.”

If the end result is that AFP news in English about Sweden no longer appears on Sweden.se, it would be a victory for the status quo. But it would be a pyrrhic victory, for the internet is clearly moving in this direction. The site-based publishing paradigm is turning into feed-based publishing; Sites are more and more becoming amalgams of disparate syndicated information sources. Sweden.se is just the beginning.