The dilemmas of sharing: Five dilemmas when presenting the past to the present

Abstract

In April 2022, a new rights agreement was signed between the Norwegian broadcaster, NRK, and Norwaco, an organisation for rights holders. This gave NRK the opportunity to publish on its digital platforms any self-produced radio and television content broadcast before 1st January, 2015. As a result, the NRK Archive is now attracting greater interest from across the organisation, and archive content has been given a more active role in NRK’s publishing strategy. Finally, in-demand drama and classic comedy may be shared with the public again — but should it? The agreement has initiated new conversations within NRK, between functional areas that strive to meet the demands of the present, and the archive, whose task is to promote history and join the dots. Is the quality of the storytelling, humour and terminology good enough for today? What about the ethics? This paper addresses all these questions and the different challenges during different periods of the publishing process, both the practical workflows and the ethical discussions. We have boiled them down to five dilemmas that contain useful lessons learned — lessons we wished we had known from the start.