During the current era of “polycrisis,” (e.g., Zeitlin et al. 2019), coupled with a diverse and complex media landscape, it is becoming increasingly challenging yet more crucial for citizens to find reliable content. Citizens‘ trust in information institutions such as the media is essential for democracy, but journalism must earn that trust.

The Nordic countries have been labeled as “Media Welfare States” (Syvertsen et al. 2014), characterized, among other things, by the legacy of strong national mixed media systems in which public service broadcasters (PSBs) play a crucial role. PSB organizations have also been at the forefront of digitalization and, early on, have become, de facto, public service media (PSM) that offer a variety of content and services in different formats and platforms, including on social media. They have also rapidly responded to challenges such as COVID-19 (e.g., Horowitz & Leino 2020) or disinformation (e.g., Horowitz & Nieminen 2024).

Still, in recent years, many Nordic PSM have faced strong opposition from their national commercial counterparts and populist right-wing politicians. Commercial media, worried about their future in the era of platformisation, argue that PSM have an undue advantage in the domestic news and entertainment market and that PSM offerings should be significantly reduced to “fill in the gap” by mostly providing genres that are not commercially viable. The rise of populist politics in the Nordics, as in many other countries, coupled with austerity policies, has additionally heightened the claims in the political debates that PSM are over-funded–and possibly politically biased. (E.g., Ala-Fossi et al. 2024 forthcoming.)

The case of the Nordics is especially interesting in that trust in PSM is extraordinarily high compared to many other countries in Europe and beyond (e.g., Horowitz et al. 2023; Nielsen and Newman 2023). In addition, Nordic policy-makers and media literacy experts see PSM as essential in combating communication disorders in today’s multi-crisis environment (Karell and Horowitz 2022). This can be partly understood in the national media’s awareness of what they can and should do to maintain and strengthen trust in national legacy media (Grönlund et al. 2024). Drawing from audience analyses (Horowitz et al. 2023), interviews of PSM professionals and stakeholders (Karell and Horowitz, 2022), and other journalism professionals (Grönlund et al. 2024), this essay discusses the significant role and especially the success of trust building by PSM in the largest Nordic countries Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden. First, it discussed the multidimensionality of trust as both a rational and affective experience for audiences (Horowitz et al. 2020). Second, it illustrates this multidimensionality with recent Nordic survey data focusing on PSM. Third, it reflects on these findings with several recent analyses of how Nordic media professionals see trust and their role in strengthening relationships with audiences. Finally, we discuss the implications of these findings for PSM strategies and practices in the Nordics and beyond.