Thursday, November 27–Tuesday, December 30
Millennium’s special report on Hans-Erik Wennerström took up all of forty-six pages
of the magazine and exploded like a time bomb the last week of November. The
main story appeared under the joint byline of Mikael Blomkvist and Erika Berger.
For the first few hours the media did not know how to handle the scoop. A similar
story just a year earlier had resulted in Blomkvist being convicted of libel, and it had
also apparently resulted in his being dismissed from Millennium. For that reason his
credibility was regarded as rather low. Now the same magazine was back with a
story by the same journalist containing much more serious allegations than the
article for which he had run into so much trouble. Some parts of the report were so
absurd that they defied common sense. The Swedish media sat and waited, filled
with mistrust.
But that evening She on TV4 led off with an eleven-minute summary of the
highlights in Blomkvist’s accusations. Berger had lunched with the host several
days earlier and given her an advance exclusive.
TV4’s brutal profile scooped the state-run news channels, which did not clamber on
to the bandwagon until the 9:00 news. By then the TT wire service had also sent out
its first wire with the cautious headline:CONVICTED JOURNALIST ACCUSES
FINANCIER OF SERIOUS CRIME. The text was a rewrite of the TV story, but the fact
that TT addressed the subject at all unleashed feverish activity at the Conservative
morning newspaper and at a dozen of the larger regional papers as they reset their
front pages before the presses started rolling. Up until then, the papers had more
or less decided to ignore the Millennium allegations.
The Liberal morning newspaper commented on Millennium’s scoop in the form of
an editorial, written personally by the editor in chief, earlier in the afternoon. The
editor in chief then went to a dinner party as TV4 started broadcasting its news
programme. He dismissed his secretary’s frantic calls that there “might be
something” to Blomkvist’s claims with these later famous words: “Nonsense—if
there were, our financial reporters would have found out about it long ago.”
Consequently, the Liberal editor in chief’s editorial was the only media voice in the
country that butchered Millennium’s claims. The editorial contained phrases such
as: personal vendetta, criminally sloppy journalism, and demands that measures be
taken against indictable allegations regarding decent citizens. But that was the only
contribution the editor in chief made during the debate.