Swedish Radio says programs in foreign languages helps newly arrived immigrants to navigate the flow of news in the Swedish society. The state owned broadcaster both podcast radio news in Russian and has a Russian language news-portal.
The Governing Council of Finland’s public broadcaster YLE decided on Wednesday to start broadcasting news in Russian on their TV1 channel from 2013. YLE argues the importance of improving their service to the Russian speaking audience in Finland.
In a tweet earlier this week, Finland’s Minister for European Affairs and Foreign Trade Alexander Stubb wrote, “Good! We have an active 50 000 strong Russian speaking minority.”
YLE News has for years served the Russian speakers in Finland with both radio- and internet news.
Norwegian national broadcaster NRK has no services for the sharply increasing group of Russian immigrants to Norway. The numbers of Russian immigrants is especially high in Troms and Finnmark, Norway’s two northernmost counties. In the city of Tromsø, Russians are now the largest immigrant group. Russians are also the largest group of foreign students in Norway.
Despite large number of Russians, NRK will not follow the example of the national broadcasters in the neighboring Barents countries. Asked by BarentsObserver, editor of NRK in Troms and Finnmark, Pål Hansen says, “There exists no plan in NRK for a special service in Russian.”
In Russia, state-owned radio channel Voice of Russia publishes comprehensive news in the languages of all the Barents countries, Norwegian, Swedish and Finnish.
