Finnish Media Overlook.

Look at that! I did had time to finish almost all my other assignments after all.

We had to swiftly research the  Finnish media and will give a presentation about it on thursday. here is what we looked into so far:

Media Outlet Owners

Yleisradio (YLE), also known as Finnish Broadcasting Company in English is Finland's national public broadcasting company. It is a public limited company, and 99,98% of it is owned by the Finnish state. It is widely modelled after its UK counterpart, the BBC. YLE offers many services, television and radio being the most visible.

MTV (MTV Oy) is Finland's most watched commercial television channel and one of Europe's oldest commercial television broadcast companies. Previously it was owned by several advertising agencies, however today it is owned by a Swedish publishing company Bonnier. MTV offers news in the television and on their own website and also in radio (Radio Nova). Several other channels (most of them require a fee to watch) are under MTV's ownership - Sub, AVA and the MTV Total channel package.

Aamulehti is a Finnish language daily newspaper published in the Tampere region. Aamulehti Corporation owned the paper until 2003 when it was acquired by Finnish Alma Media. Aamulehti's sister papers are Iltalehti and the business-oriented Kauppalehti.

Helsingin Sanomat (HS) is the largest subscription-based newspaper in the Nordic countries and it is owned by Sanoma which is a Finnish company that also operates in over ten other European countries. Sanoma also owns (for the most part) the television channel Nelonen.

Censorship

In Finland we have freedom of speech which gives any person right to say out loud their opinion.

Its tricky thing because now we all think we all can say whatever we want without censorship, the truth however is that there are all lot of things that are not said. Finnish media have developed this certain way how to say things. For example during election of president on 2006 there was question asked: “Should president of Finland support status of Swedish language in Finland?”

But that question doesn’t really ask anything about Finnish language legislation or the law that makes us to study Swedish in our schools.

So in a way Finnish media have found a way to ask questions about the matter people want to hear without going straight to the point. People just remember politicians talking about the topic and creates illusion of censorship media. http://www.pakkoruotsi.net/media.shtml

Safeguarding impartiality and ethics

We have “Julkisen sanan neuvosto” also know as Council for Mass Media
http://www.jsn.fi/en/

CMM was established in 1968 by publishers and journalists.

Its task is to interpret good professional practice and defend the freedom of speech and publication but it does not exercise legal jurisdiction.

Any person who considers that there has been a breach of good professional practice by media may bring this to the attention of the CMM.

Example of Finnish Media Online Article

News are exposed in a short an concise way, but the amount of information on the articles is lacking and very short. It presents the head title followed by a short description of the article. It is immediately followed by a facebook icon to "recommend" the article to others, or share it. After that an image is presented and followed by the bulk of the article. In the end, it is followed by a series of links to "related news" which may or may not be related.

On the side, a series of headlines is displayed along with a section of "our picks" where they display the articles that seems the most relevant for the journalists. It also has a timeline with news on the far right. On the top of the page, a weather report.

Interesting link about the media landscape:

http://ejc.net/media_landscapes/finland

Is there Free Press?

It’s difficult to have media that is completely objective and free, but the situation in Finland is definitely better than in many other countries. As long as it doesn’t break the laws you can get pretty much any opinions posted as long as someone is willing to publish it.

Politicians can be criticized freely and even quite radical opinions get out there. Even blatant racists and just general assholes (the True Finns party) can get their voices heard.

The word “free media” is used a lot, but it kind of remains open who and what it actually refers to, or if it's all finnish media in general. Like in this article.

http://yle.fi/uutiset/vapaa_media_pelasti_henkeni/6318533

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** This was a group task, so team members opinions are expressed as well.