Can anyone really trust Mari Rantanen, the Interior Minister of Perussuoalaiset (PS)* of Finland? All it took to whitewash her far-right racist views was to take down such posts from her social media sites after the election and claim that she does not believe in conspiracy theories. What a coward! She spreads all these far-right…
Tag: youth gangs
Media Monitoring Group of Finland [1]: Finland’s “youth gang problem” is Finland’s denied “racism problem”
The youth gang “problem” in Finland is a knee-jerk racist reaction. On and off, we have read about our youth gang “problem” with sensationalist headlines from newspapers that should know better. Remember back in 2014, when radical-right Perussuomalaiset (PS)* MP Tom Packalén created quite a stir when he claimed that a youth gang in East…
Oulu 2019: Is the media going to allow the PS to pull another fast one on it?
What kind of reaction can you expect from a country that continues to see foreigners like Muslims and other people of color as a threat? Remember Oulu and the sexual harassment cases that spun out of control thanks to the fuel that politicians, the media, and the police were feeding? It’s déjà-vu again: politicians, the…
Migrant Tales Media Monitoring: Framing youth gang violence by MTV
When the media speaks of youth gang violence, it usually spikes it with provocative adjectives and fear-mongering. MTV’s interview and good comments by Elina Pekkarinen, ombudswoman for children, were exceptions. If you want a good example of how the media frames this topic, look at the picture behind the host. It reads “violence” next to…
President Sauli Niinistö throws weight behind opposition’s election campaign by citing youth gang “problem”
President Sauli Niinistö, who has a track record of speaking disparagingly about Muslims and asylum seekers, was quoted as saying on Yle’s 8:30 news that he fears Finland “apparently” is “moving a bit” on Sweden’s path concerning youth gang violence. “It’s a very, very unfortunate and dangerous phenomenon, we seem to be following a bit…
Yle A-studio host Marja Sannikka does it again and cannot get migrants off her mind
A-studio Host Marja Sannikka* hosted a disastrous talk show with Renaz Ebrahimi last year and, recently, a program on youth gangs. Both were disingenuous and unfair to minorities. Well, Sannikka is at it again, and wouldn’t you know that she had something lowly to say about migrants? Tuesday’s A-studio talk show was about civil disobedience, and Sannikka asked an environmental activist…
STATEMENT: Yle should stop picking on minority youths and stick to facts
It was in 2020 when Helsingin Sanomat published a big story about the dangers of youth gang violence in Helsinki. The story received a lot of criticism because it spread the misinformation that youth crime is rising in Helsinki and Greater Helsinki. It isn’t surprising that the state-owned broadcaster, Yle, has spread the issue, especially…
Migrant Tales Media Monitoring: Yle continues to shamefully label racialized youths as dangers to society
The Finnish mainstream media has a poor reputation in the eyes of racialized Finns for spreading and labeling them. Yle did it again on its 8:30 pm news, where it led with a picture of a white youth giving the finger, followed by no sources except for “the police believes” that street gang criminal activity…
Migrant Tales Media Monitoring: How #astudio persecutes and labels migrant youths with dubious talking points
#Astudio host Marja Sannikka kicks off the next topic on the talk show on gang violence with the following words that sound like a thriller: “Knives, violence, revenge. Finnish youth gang crime grows at a worrying pace.” In the talk show, does Sannikka gives us any facts about “the worrying [growth] pace” of gang violence…