Swedish Radio launches daily news podcast in Russian – all media free to use the material

This article was originally published on Swedish Radio. 

“We have taken an editorial decision to try to reach out with our factual reporting to a country where objectivity and impartiality are not available. As journalists, we want to act when information about a war is kept secret,” says Björn Löfdahl, programme director at Swedish Radio. 

The podcast will be produced by Radio Sweden at Swedish Radio’s main newsroom, Ekot. There we have access to the entire news reporting steeped in a culture that is editorially strong, and where objectivity and impartiality are always in focus. Content for the podcast will be drawn from Swedish Radios overall news offering and will be published on a daily basis. The first publication will take place early next week. 

Listen to the first episode: Подкаст на русском языке о воине в Украине

The podcast will be available to all media that wish to publish via Swedish Radios open API. 

“By offering editors to publish the material via our open API, we are potentially opening up many paths to the podcast. This makes it more difficult to block or stop the content,” says Björn Löfdahl. 

Swedish Radio began its live broadcasts of the war the same night that Russia attacked Ukraine. Since then, Swedish Radio has given listeners multifaceted coverage of the war. Enabling the proliferation of the news material and journalism that we are now investing heavily in has been crucial in deciding to do this and deciding on which means of distribution to use. We have based the decision on a thorough analysis. 

Read more: Swedish Radio in 2022

“It is not surprising that we have received questions about our previous broadcasts in Russian via short and medium wave. For us, however, it is not relevant to restart the broadcasts that ended in 2010. Even in 2010 our opportunity to reach Russia or other countries was limited and the technology has since been phased out. As such, any re-investment is not relevant. The short-wave transmitters simply do not exist and the only medium-wave transmitter that exists only reaches a fraction of Russia for a limited time at night,” says Björn Löfdahl. 

INFORMATION FOR EDITORS – information on how to use Swedish Radio’s open API can be found here.

This article was originally published on Swedish Radio.