Finnish Centre Party: YLE is biased
Finland’s Centre Party aren’t too happy that public funding is going to support state-controlled YLE, so they can show biased political satire like Itse Valtiaat…
Suomenmaa, the party organ, frets in its leader on Tuesday that Itse Valtiaat, a computer-generated animation set in Parliament, and Uutisvuoto, the Finnish version of Britain’s Have I Got News For You, have long sought to lambaste the Centre Party.
The leader adds that the programmes, aired in primetime Saturday evening slots, systematically offer standardised preconceptions to the viewing public.
“Such methods do not belong in the Finnish Broadcasting Company’s operational arsenal. Or if they do, the Centre Party should most urgently revise its attitude toward the Finnish Broadcasting Company and its backing for funding,” Suomenmaa writes.
Another fine reason not to pay your TV license!
The center party has it’s own channel - TV2.
Comment by Topias — Wed, Mar 29th, 2006 @ 3:14 pm
The Centre Party has made a tradition out of whining about media bias.
I have not watched Itse Valtiaat, so I cannot comment on that, but generally I consider YLE to be pretty balanced.
Comment by m — Wed, Mar 29th, 2006 @ 3:35 pm
The Centre Party has made a tradition out of whining about media bias.
The Centre Party has made a tradition out of whining in general. Elections are coming, so you can bet on a lot of noise from there. Vanhanen’s lash against Ilta-Sanomat is in the same category.
As for “balanced political satire”, who the hell would want to watch that, except as a sleeping aid perhaps?
Comment by Anonymous — Wed, Mar 29th, 2006 @ 4:01 pm
They are absolutely right. I mean, who in their right mind can claim that YLE or Ilta-Sanomat with it’s targeting center politicians campaigns would be balanced. Nobody, not even socialists themselves.
Comment by Markku — Wed, Mar 29th, 2006 @ 5:25 pm
Centre Party claims that Itse Valtiaat is biased against it more than any other party.
Of course this is nothing compared to the last time, when The National Coalition party was moaning about Itse Valtiaat! Especially their youth organisation “Kokoomusnuoret” is hilarious. Itse Valtiaat should make more fun of them.
Itse Valtiaat is produced for YLE by an independent PRIVATE company Filmiteollisuus, yet our totalitarian center-right parties want censorship to the program.
“Another fine reason not to pay your TV license!”
I don’t get it. Don’t you like satire?
Comment by Hoplaa — Wed, Mar 29th, 2006 @ 5:26 pm
Especially their youth organisation “Kokoomusnuoret†is hilarious. Itse Valtiaat should make more fun of them.
There’s no need. They do it themselves.
If I have any grudge against the show (only seen it when the TV happens to be on at the time), it is the shameless promotion of Halonen’s Muumimamma image. Hardly suprising when you know that the show is written by the über-lefty Aleksi Bardy.
Comment by Anonymous — Wed, Mar 29th, 2006 @ 6:25 pm
The whole business of a State (at least in theory) owning a news station is a relic of the past, time to jetison it.
As for YLE being balanced…..choke gurgle and gag, like all media, it really tries to hold onto that myth with all its might, but balanced unbiased jouranlism (for the most part)is nothing but a myth.
Comment by KGS59 — Wed, Mar 29th, 2006 @ 6:41 pm
Keskusta has got a teflon shield; nothing is their fault everything is the previous(es) parliament(s) fault. That and they whine about everything… and just in time to earn some votes too.
Plus, humans are biased by default, so they/we can’t be exactly truly unbiased.
Comment by Mr. Anonymous — Wed, Mar 29th, 2006 @ 8:27 pm
The chairman of YLE’s administrative board Mika Hentilä (Centre Party) denied those claims and said that Itse valtiaat makes fun of most parties. Anyone who has watched more than one episode would probably agree at least for the most part.
Strong supporters of one particular party or belief often seem to look at the world in a way, where everything that isn’t directly promoting their own views is seen as biased. They often fail to see that other views are critisized or poked fun at in a similar way.
Nothing new there, just another political party newspaper barking it’s own ideology at the tax payers cost. Personally I think that the TV licence fee should be abolished, but so should the public funding of one-sided bad press like Suomenmaa, Uutispäivä Demari etc.
Comment by Joonas — Thu, Mar 30th, 2006 @ 7:38 am
If YLE would cut out all programs that could be commercially broadcasted – Olympics and political satire included – and would produce only the essential informative and educational stuff, they would need only one TV channel and one radio channel divided between Finnish and Swedish programming. That way they could cut their budget radically and require a much lower fee. Which I would be happy to pay.
I’m sure there would be commercial broadcasters that would be happy to broadcast the political satires and sports programs. The quality of political jokes might get even better: Bill Maher’s discussions don’t seem to suffer from the fact that he is now with HBO and not with a network that requires more political correctness.
When there was discussion of whether the TV fees should be covered from state budget of separate fees, Jungner expressed his concern that with state budget funding there is a danger of political control of the programs. There is some danger of that even now, as Phil’s post seems to confirm.
Comment by Mara — Thu, Mar 30th, 2006 @ 2:07 pm
Just commenting on message 6: I don’t understand what your point is about Halonen’s muumimamma image on Itse Valtiaat. I can immediately point to few episodes such as ‘Titanic’ where Halonen & Tuomioja symbolically wreck finnish economy and Halonen flees from sinking ship by jumping on a helicopter piloted by her security guards (much like in ‘Tappajatomaatit).
All parties get their share of satire (example, Tarja Cronberg is show as walking potata!) in Itsevaltiaat but large parties naturally attrack most of it, which should be clear to anyone that who actually watches it and you can actually do it for free: http://www.itsevaltiaat.fi/flash/fullscreen.html
Phil, I would like to know if you actually watch the series or are you just jumping on the bandwagon by grasping any piece of criticism about publicly funded organisation that comes along?
Comment by Mr. S — Thu, Mar 30th, 2006 @ 7:55 pm
There is absolutely no reason why the state should control any media outlet. The only reason they do in welfare states is to prevent new power bases from forming that are not under the control of welfare state elites.
Comment by Finnpundit — Thu, Mar 30th, 2006 @ 9:42 pm
Naah, it’s just easy to make a score when you aim at the center.
Goes with target shooting and political satire.
…Or not really. Here is no finnish party whitch hasn’t made any other political satire useless than their real life screwups.
Phil, you should have lived here during the Kekkonen -era. Whining about biased media would have had a real meaning (didn’t hear much of it those days).
But on the other hand, many things were also better then, e.g. no celebrity clowns as politicians. And less whining.
Comment by issi — Fri, Mar 31st, 2006 @ 8:40 am
Mr S: Phil, I would like to know if you actually watch the series or are you just jumping on the bandwagon by grasping any piece of criticism about publicly funded organisation that comes along?
A good point, especially since the original critisism was made by a (at least partially) publicly funded newspaper. Suomenmaa critisizing YLE is really a case of pot meets the kettle.
Comment by Joonas — Fri, Mar 31st, 2006 @ 1:36 pm
Of course Suomenmaa has a political bias! If it didn’t, the paper wouldn’t be doing what the organ of a political party is supposed to do. Its biases are balanced out by all those other political newspapers, which get their share of public support.
The role of YLE is different: it is not supposed to have a political bias, and if a party newspaper feels that a YLE program is treating unfairly, there is nothing hypocritical about expressing that view.
As for the actual issue, my perception of Itse Valtiaat is that it seems to lampoon all political groups quite equally.
Comment by Kimmo W — Fri, Mar 31st, 2006 @ 7:33 pm
Kimmo W.: Its biases are balanced out by all those other political newspapers, which get their share of public support.
Why not just get rid of all of them? Do we really need publicly funded political party newspapers in this day and age?
I agree with you on Itse valtiaat, but it would still be nice if we could have real political satire show instead of a cartoon that can’t handle really current issues due to technical issues such as rendering times and lack of characters.
Then again, it tells a lot about Finnish political parties that the main concern of at least certain members of them seems to be a 15 minute long weekly cartoon show (Itse valtiaat) and an entertainment programme that has past it’s sell-by-date several years ago (Uutisvuoto). Not much going on in this country…
Comment by Joonas — Fri, Mar 31st, 2006 @ 10:39 pm
“Why not just get rid of all of them? Do we really need publicly funded political party newspapers in this day and age?”
Maybe we don’t. That’s not my point. What I am trying to say is that the juxtaposition of the by-definition-politically-biased political party newspaper Suomenmaa and the public service broadcaster YLE - is an apples-and-oranges comparison.
For YLE to exhibit a political bias, would definitely be a violation of its mandate, because maintaining a political balance is part of its job.
Suomenmaa has no such obligation of objectivity: it is perfectly OK for a political party newspaper such as Suomenmaa to show a political bias, because promoting the Center/re party’s cause is essentially its job. Everyone knows that the views expressed in political party newspapers are slanted: that is why everyone takes the views expressed in such papers with a grain of salt.
State subsidies to political party newspapers are seen as part and parcel of Finnish democracy. You can disagree with the basic premise, but the public funds for political party newspapers seem to be distributed on a reasonably equitable basis, in that it is proportional to the support that the parties in question get in Parliamentary elections.
So if Suomenmaa sees a political bias in the content of Itse Valtiaat, then it is quite proper for it to point it out, and if a fair and balanced analysis of the content of that particular program shows that the newspaper’s objections are justified, then it is right and proper for that bias to be exposed and rectified.
However, the undeniable fact of a considerable political bias on the part of Suomenmaa is a good backdrop for the evaluation of views expressed in that newspaper.
In a nutshell, if the Center Party organ Suomenmaa thinks that YLE shows a political bias, it has every right to point it out; it is the duty of the newspaper to express this view, regardless of the state subsidies that it gets. The fact that many people - including myself - do not agree with this assessment, is beside the point.
Comment by Kimmo W. — Sun, Apr 2nd, 2006 @ 12:36 am
Completely unbiased journalism is nothing but a myth, because everyone has their own opinions that (no matter how small or big) will affect communication in some ways. It’s possible to bring together different contradictory opinions in stories, but because (most) journalism is done by humans, opinions still affect much.
Comment by Mr. Nobody — Sun, Apr 2nd, 2006 @ 11:40 pm
The company in charge of production of “Itsevaltiaat” the series is called Filmiteollisuus -they have strong SDP and YLE ties. Director of “Itsevaltiaat” Riina Hyytiä is long-time collaborator of über-pinko Aleksi Bardy, known for arrogant attitude towards everything (at least geographically) above Kehä III, matched only by his ignorance.
Also Osku Pajamäki (www.osku.net), a known left-wing SDP member and e.g.candidate in -03 parliamentary elections is not only working as a researcher for the series but is also currently employed as a producer for Filmiteollisuus.
The closest comparison I can come up with is Fox producing political satire about democratic party, and then claim it’s not biased…
Comment by Getyer Factstraight — Tue, Apr 4th, 2006 @ 12:20 am
Oh, come on, “Getyer”, you can’t say (or you can, but you would bw wrong) that the program draws an exactly flattering image of Tuomioja, Lipponen, Halonen, or the two former presidents!
Whatever the political affiliations of the people behind Itse Valtiaat, they produce a pretty funny show, which would be totally ruined, if the production team were forced to take on members on the basis of political affiliation, so as to reflect the composition of Parliament.
Comment by Kimmo W. — Tue, Apr 4th, 2006 @ 9:02 am
Not flattering, didn’t claim that. A message can be layered in various ways.
The question is not about affiliation or ruining the series, but whether publicly-funded YLE should buy and broadcast clearly biased show in the first place.
Comment by Getyer Factstraight — Tue, Apr 4th, 2006 @ 9:44 am
I have not yet seen any evidence that Itse Valtiaat actually exhibits a political bias for or against any particular party. Of course some parties ask for it more than others - especially the ones who can’t take a joke.
Comment by Kimmo W. — Tue, Apr 4th, 2006 @ 11:16 am
Kimmo… SDP can take a joke. They elected one
Sorry.. an open goal… Greetings from Kesk. Central Recruting Ground, Ring 8, Pohjanmaa!
Comment by BloatedBubba — Tue, Apr 4th, 2006 @ 6:55 pm