The thesis below published in 2014 by Mike Hofman. It is a comprehensive report on how censorship and self-censorship happened in Finland during the Cold War. It is surprising how Finland has sidestepped this issue and thrown it in the dustbin of history.
As the old saying states, if we don’t know or deny our history are condemned to repeat it.
Even during the height of the Cold War, when media censorship and self-censorship were endemic in Finland, I never heard of the police searching a home of a reporter without a court order as happened Sunday, according to YLE News.
Read below Hofman’s thesis (in Dutch) and my interview in English.
Read full thesis (in Dutch) and a synopsis in English here.
Below is the interview in English that Mike Hofman had with me. There is only one correction in the interview. I worked for Bridge News, not British News.
English summary
Background
During the Cold War, Finland tried to deal with its adjacent superpower, the Soviet Union, without losing its sovereignty. This process is often referred to as ‘Finlandisation’. The media, also, suffered under Finland’s policy of ‘active neutrality’. The subject of this thesis is media censorship in Finland. More specifically, the way the Finnish government tried to influence the media and interfere in their journalism.
Purpose
To understand the role of the Finnish government in Finland’s news coverage.
Method
This thesis was conducted using both desk and field research. Desk research consisted of literature review, which was necessary to understand the country’s political situation during the Cold War. Field research includes in-depth interviews with former correspondents and former policymakers, as well as archival research at the Finnish Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Results
- There are strong indications of government intervention in the media. Many of those interventions could be considered as censorship, according to human rights organisation Amnesty International.
- The Finnish government and the Soviet embassy kept a close watch on media in Finland. They would make it clear to journalists if they were not satisfied with an article.
- The government tried to influence foreign journalists in Finland.
- There was a lot of self-censorship in Finland.Criticism of the Soviet Union was out of the question. There have been cases where critical journalists were dismissed by their editors.
The era of Finlandisation remains to this day a difficult topic to discuss. One of the reasons is that many people who were involved in the media censorship, are still active in politics or the media.
