Nordic public broadcasters have agreed to support one another if a crisis disrupts access to national news and information services. The agreement, announced on Friday, 9 October, aims to strengthen cooperation against cyberattacks, disinformation and technical disruptions across the Nordic region.
The initiative, known as the Reykjavik Agreement, brings together seven public service media organisations from five countries: Finland’s Yle, Iceland’s RÚV, Denmark’s DR, Norway’s NRK, and Sweden’s SVT, Sveriges Radio (SR) and educational broadcaster UR.
Together, the organisations serve more than 28 million people across the Nordic countries.
How Nordic public broadcasters will cooperate during crises
One of the agreement’s central commitments is to ensure that people can continue receiving reliable information even if their national broadcasting services become unavailable.
If a country experiences a major cyberattack, technical failure or another extraordinary disruption that prevents people from accessing domestic news, public broadcasters in neighbouring Nordic countries will seek to provide alternative access to verified information and public service content.
The agreement identifies three main areas of cooperation: sharing knowledge about security threats and disinformation, strengthening preparedness against cyberattacks and technical failures, and developing arrangements to support one another when news distribution is severely disrupted.
According to Icelandic broadcaster RÚV, the cooperation will also involve exchanging expertise, training and methods for verifying information and countering disinformation.
The broadcasters stress that the objective is to establish effective mechanisms for mutual assistance. The agreement does not guarantee that all services could remain available under every possible crisis scenario.
Editorial independence remains a fundamental principle
Despite the closer cooperation, the seven broadcasters have emphasised that editorial independence will remain fully protected.
The agreement focuses on operational preparedness rather than joint editorial control. Each organisation will continue making its own decisions about news coverage and broadcasting, without interference from its Nordic partners.
In their joint statement, the heads of the seven organisations underlined the importance of maintaining access to trustworthy journalism during emergencies:
A crisis must not also become an information crisis.
The broadcasters also pointed to the increasing complexity of cyber threats, hybrid attacks and disinformation, as well as the vulnerabilities created by their dependence on global digital platforms.
The Reykjavik Agreement therefore extends crisis preparedness beyond national borders, recognising that maintaining access to reliable information is not only a responsibility of individual broadcasters but also an area for wider Nordic cooperation.
