The perfect news story has had Swedish media in a strong grip all year. It includes the ingredients for a perfect drama: sex, murder, infidelity, jealousy, God and SMS. The story broke on January 10, 2004 with a murder in the small community of Knutby, outside of Uppsala. A 27-year-old nanny working for a pastor of the Pentecostal congregation, has confessed shooting dead his wife and trying to kill the man next door.
Since the day of the murder this has been front page news in Swedish media. A total of 6686 articles have been written so far (search on “Knutby” via Retriever online search). I would have bet a few bucks that the two leading tabloids Aftonbladet and Expressen would be the ones writing most articles, but the Pentecostal movements own paper Nya Dagen actually comes second. Upsala Nya Tidning is the local daily in the Knutby area.
Aftonbladet: 412 articles
Nya Dagen: 362
Expressen: 333
Upsala Nya Tidning: 312
GT: 304
An editor at Dagbladet yesterday said in a column in Dagens Media that the amount of coverage is “both unreasonable and justified. Unreasonable in comparison to other big stories, but justified because of the enormous interest. We want to know as much as possible about this unbelievable story”.
It is the classic question about media just giving us what we want, which I don’t accept. I say enough already! 6686 articles is quite enough.
Reuters has the article in English today. (Link via Gunnar.net)