Migrant Tales’ 2015 Hall of Poor and Sloppy Journalism will be updated separately. To see other examples of opinionated journalism in Finland about cultural diversity, please go to this link.
July 4
Bloggaja väittää: Huhtasaari liittyi rasistiseen Facebook-ryhmään itse (Satakunnan Kansa)
What’s wrong with this story? This story by Pori-based daily Satakunnan Kansa is a good example of lazy journalism at its best.It is also an example of how some newspapers are reluctant to challenge politicians with xenophobic agendas. Perussuomalaiset (PS)* MP Laura Huhtasaari got her fingers burned this week when Helsingin Sanomat, Finland’s biggest daily, scooped that she was a member of a racist Facebook site that has pictures of black children in pales eating watermelon with the following text, “A bucketful of shit.” Huhtasaari accused without any evidence that Sakari Timonen, one of Finland’s best anti-racism bloggers, had tipped off Helsingin Sanomat and even hacked her profile on the racist Facebook page. Instead of stating that the blogger claims that Huhtasaari joined the Facebook site herself, why didn’t Satakannun Kansa ask an IT expert to resolve the matter? Under her profile picture on the Facebook site it read that Huhtasaari joined and was not joined by some person. Huhtasaari claims that her profile ended up on the Facebook site by somebody without her permission. Sounds fishy, especially coming from a declared anti-immigration politician like herself.
UPDATE: It appears that our efforts to get in touch with Satakunnan Kansa paid off. In a new story published on the same day the daily asks an Internet authority about Huhtasaari’s defense. The Internet authority claims that Huhtasaari could have been joined to the racist Facebook community if somebody had access to her password.
* The Finnish name of the Finns Party is the Perussuomalaiset (PS). The English-language names adopted by the PS, like True Finns or Finns Party, promote in our opinion nativist nationalism and xenophobia. We therefore prefer to use the Finnish name of the party on our postings.