Sorry.. an open goal… Greetings from Kesk. Central Recruting Ground, Ring 8, Pohjanmaa!

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.

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.

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…

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.

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…

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.

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.

…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.

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?

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.

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.