As everyone tries to figure out who Finnbay is and why it’s been singled out by the Finnish foreign ministry, we could ask why is so much attention given to its director, Onur Yalcintas? What is he guilty of?
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Is he guilty of slanting news in order to get reputable global publications like The Economist and huge media companies like NBC to use the publication as a source? Did The Economist and NBC make a big mistake by quoting Finnbay?
Such publications have world-class journalists, who are humans and make mistakes. Even so, one of their most elementary skills should be confirming the credibility of their sources.
That may have been difficult considering that even the Finnish foreign ministry used to “trust” Finnbay with a link on its This is Finland site. The link was taken down on Monday, according to YLE in English.
When Finland’s ambassador to Russia, Hannu Himanen, tweeted Saturday that Finnbay is a fake site, he didn’t tell us why he made such an accusation. Does Ambassador Himanen have intelligence that we don’t have access to about Finnbay and Yalcintas?
Or did he mean the site should not be trusted because it’s unreliable?
One of the matters that surprised me the most about Ambassador Himanen’s reaction Finnbay on Sunday was its ferocity. For YLE’s 8:30pm news to state that its coverage of Russia was “a fabricated lie,” is in my opinion overkill and brings back memories of the cold war years, when the foreign ministry kept a close watch over what foreign journalists wrote.
Since Himanen has accused Finnbay of being “a fake site,” this has led to speculation that the publication may even be in cahoots with Russia in spreading misinformation about the crisis in the Ukraine and its impact on Finland.
As we mentioned on a previous blog entry, Finnbay is in my opinion nothing more than a publication that is striving to become profitable. A statement by Finnbay Sunday didn’t help matters when it claimed that they report the facts because they “have the balls.” Such statements reveal more bravado than professional journalism.
Yalcintas has a lot of questions to answer. His silence isn’t helping him at all. If he publishes stories that are picked up by publications like The Economist, we should know who Finnbay is. They have an obligation to be transparent and fair with us.
I’m certain that publications like The Economist would have not paid much attention to this story if Yalcintas would answer some tough questions about Finnbay like the fake address, who is Bruce Stone, Enterprises Borderless and the publications legal status.
The sooner Finnbay clears up these valid questions, the sooner the storm will blow over.
They clearly lie in their “news”. halla-ahos picture they claim is from him…
Easy to tell its propaganda like your page.
Hannu, we had some good chats before. One of the things we spoke of was how hazardous Scripta and Hommaforum are for you. Are your opinions of migrants, visible minorities still the same from 2008, when you called a social media lynch mob against my site from Scripta?