The critical reporting and credibility of the Finnish Broadcasting Company (Yle) have suffered in recent times star reporters quitting and parties like the Islamophobic Perussuomalaiset (PS)* influencing editorial content from the board.
There is no better example of Yle’s partiality and toothless reporting than a recent political human interest article about Riikka Purra, PS first vice-president who spreads white Finnish supremacist ideology.
One of Purra’s pet topics is how white Finns will become a minority in their country due to non-white immigration. She spreads such far-right fear-mongering despite knowing that Finland is one of the whitest countries in Europe.
Articles like the one below by Riikka Uosukainen, which raise Purra to a pedal stool because of her stellar rise in politics and possibly the next leader of the PS, are the partial and toothless stories that Yle writes uncritically today.
Imagine, in Finland today that a politician’s stellar rise hinges on spreading hatred and conspiracy theories about migrants. This is how low our country and Yle have stooped.
If we look at these pictures in the story, it is clear that the reporter likes Purra and wants to give her the best image she can in the story.
That is what serious journalists blame opinionated and toothless journalism for spreading racism and hostility towards migrants and minorities.
In the last picture with the new party secretary, Simo Grönroos, the reporter describes him as “a nationalist” who founded Suomen Sisu, a far-right Nazi-spirited association.
Just like Purra and her white Finnish supremacist conspiracy theories, Suomen Sisu is against Finns marrying foreigners because it would be bad for “racial hygiene.”
The article is one more slippery slope of how Finland is normalizing racism and white supremacy.
* The Perussuomalaiset (PS) party imploded on June 13, 2017, into two factions, the PS and New Alternative, which is now called Blue Reform. In the last parliamentary election, Blue Reform was wiped off the Finnish political map when they saw their numbers in parliament plummet from 18 MPs to none. A direct translation of Perussuomalaiset in English would be something like “basic” or “fundamental Finn.” Official translations of the Finnish name of the party, such as Finns Party or True Finns, promote in our opinion nativist nationalism and racism. We, therefore, at Migrant Tales prefer to use in our postings the Finnish name of the party once and after that the acronym PS.