The advance information was clear. The prime minister had stated that the documentary could be a “new effort from people who want to push disinformation against Sweden”. The authority for psychological defense had warned and SVT showed parts with obviously misleading image choices to biased stories from parents whose children were forcibly taken into custody by authorities in Sweden, Norway and Germany, among others.
And that’s right, all of this includes the three-part series. There are long interviews with parents who have been taken away from their children, without explanation and without highlighting the children’s perspective. Anyone who knows Swedish can read about the details of the cases, including the children’s personal data, because the documentary films put out verdicts and other documents without masking in full screen. Therefore, as a Swedish viewer, I can read information that sometimes contradicts what is said by interviewed people.
After watching for a while, I start to waver
So far, it is easy to agree that this is misleading and one-sided. Perhaps it can even be called disinformation.
But after watching for a while, I still start to waver. There are also interviews with representatives of the Swedish and European image: a human rights lawyer, a Swedish former children’s ombudsman, a German social democratic politician.
It is more difficult to call something propaganda when even a criticized party gets to speak. I also discover that the Turkish production company that made the series markets it as a journalistic production, and it appears that they wanted to deepen the picture after years of incorrect reporting about Swedish authorities “kidnapping” Muslim children.
In some cases, the clips become completely incomprehensible
However, the image of this being more neutral than expected falls apart when I get to part three of the series, where interviewed parents begin to speculate that private individuals are making money from children taken into care. Now the whole thing is described as “child trafficking” and here also follows a number of speculative clips that seem to illustrate that there could be political motives for this trafficking.
The conclusion about the whole is still that it is misleading, but that the documentary is journalistically packaged in such a way that you need to look carefully to understand it. In addition, the material is cut together without narration or explanations and without factual information about what reality looks like. The material also does not feel completely processed, in some cases the clips become completely incomprehensible and taken out of context.
The Al-Jazeera documentary has so far had few screenings and is only available online. Possibly it is too complicated and difficult to access to have any real spread.