Erik Strand, 30.11.2025
In this commentary, Line Lauridsen comments upon an ugly piece of Danish jounalism. Jesper Larsen is a man who has publicly criticised the Danish government’s military support to Ukraine. In 2023 he became the main person in Danmarks Radio’s documentary ‘Skyggekrigen’ (“The Shadow War”), which claimed to dicover a network spreading Russian disinformation in the Nordic countries. The documentary is produced in cooperation between governmental TV channels in the Nordic countries and has been aired by Sweden’s STV[3], Norway’s NrK[4] and Finland’s YLE[5].
Lauridsen writes about a Danis court case where Fredrik Hugo Ledegaard Thim has been sued for breaking Danish penal law (§ 267 (6)) by defamating Jesper larsen. The court has heard journalists who participated in the documentary as witnesses. The court will decide the case on December 01, 2025.
Lauridsen point at absurd statements from two journalists who participated in the documentaries and who witnessed in court on 27.10.25 and 01.11.25. One example is Lisbeth Quass, who said clearly that the team behind the documentary does not see it as part of their journalistic work to scrutinize their own sources. They simply assume that their sources tell the truth and then use their sources’s statements to analyze the topic. The topic is the spread of Russian disinformation in the Nordic countries, and the documentary presented Jesper Larsen as a kind of super spreader of Russian disinformation.
Larsen’s lawyer questioned Quass about who decides what is disinformation. Quass then pointed at Jeannette Serritslev at the institution Forsvarsakademiet (“Military academy”) and Jacob Bæk, who conducts research on conspiracy theories at the University of Roskilde. She confirmed that she had not seen documantation that their allegations are true.
Lauridsen then describes the journalistic methods used by the team behind the documentary. It consists of listing all naratives that western actors call “Russian disinformation” and proceed to track connections between all persons in the Nordic countries who have voiced 3 or more of these narratives. During the hearing of witnesses, it became clear that there did not exist other criteria for belonging to this ‘network’ than being in contact at least once. So people do not necessarily know that they belong to this network, but Danmarks Radio knows.
Lauridsen points at one important detail – when TV viewers hear the word ‘network’, they tend to think of a organized group, like LTF (a criminal network banned in Denmark) or Bandidos, where members are in close contact and cooperate in order to further the interests of the group.
Lauridsen mentions that episode 3 of Skyggekrigen was advertised with the following introduction: “Together with the other Nordic public service stations, we in DR can discover a network consisting of at least 152 persons, who according to experts systematically – and to a large extent – spread Russian disinformation in the Nordic countries. In the network, we find for example Russian organisations, people sentenced for espionage, and people with connections to Russian intelligence services. And 52 of the people in the network are Danish, or people who reside in Denmark.”.
Lauridsen makes the point that when Danmarks Radio uses the word ‘systematically’ to describe that one has spread disinformation several times. They use ‘systematically’ in the same way as ‘repeated’. This was revealed during the hearing of the witnesses.
Lauridsen asks a relevant question – if the DR journalists have discovered people sentenced for espionage, as well as people with connections to Russian intelligence, why are they not mentioned by name, why is only Jesper Larsen and political activist Mats Palsvig portrayed?
And why does journalist Fredrik Hugo present it as a dramatic climax 20 minutes into the episode that Jesper Larsen’s homepage is located on a Russian server, when he himself has informed about this on Twitter since 2019?
We can also read that the journalists in court told the judge that the journalistic method used for discovering the ‘network’ was prepared in cooperation with the University of Roskilde. As a witness, conspiracy theory researcher Jakob Bæk Kristensen confirmed that his group construct the networks they analyse. As he said: “When RUC discover a network, one finds the nodes that disclose the structure the network has got”. Lawyer Adam Elkheir then asked whether the network that was the topic of Skyggekrigen’s episode 3, was constructed or discovered, the researcher replied: “It is a network construction that mirrors a part of reality”:
DR’s lawyer Peter Labert concluded his procedure with the following statement: It is not the DR journalists work to check whether statements are correct or true – journalists shall only present things from reliable sources.”
Fampo 