I etikens gränsland
en fallstudie av fyra dagstidningars bevakande av gripandet av den misstänkte Hagamannen
The aim of this research was to describe how daily papers comply with the ethical guidelines of journalism when reporting on the arrest of a criminal suspect. In order to do this we studied how the arrest of a suspected violent serial rapist was covered by four newspapers, Västerbottens Folkblad, Västerbottenskuriren, Dagens Nyheter and Svenska Dagbladet. The theoretical areas of the study were the ethical guidelines, and other ethical perspectives in the media, news value and general interest regarding news. The research strategy was a case study, and a text analysis was used in order to collect empirical data. Several readings of the newspapers resulted in four themes to analyse: Identifying, to judge someone unheard, show consideration for victims and criminal, the use of sources. The conclusions are drawn from these four themes, together with two additional themes, and show that local and national daily papers are different in many aspects regarding the following of the ethical guidelines. These differences depend partly on the geographical distance to the event and partly on the way the newspapers choose to apply the news value to the event.