As noted above, all media organisations are committed to following the guidelines published by CMM. Most news media also have their own internal guidelines in one form or another, usually used to complement the guidelines of journalists and to give more detailed instructions on the practices of the media organisation in question. A number of interviewees noted that they have internal journalistic rules, handbooks, or stylebooks that complement and specify the general national rules (see Indicator F4 – Internal rules for practice of newsroom democracy). The right to reply and the publication of corrections are guaranteed at the level of both national code of ethics and media law, as confirmed by the UJF president:
Inhouse rules exist widely, usually they are more pragmatic rules on how to interpret the CMM rules, or maybe even more rigid. E.g. Suomen Kuvalehti has a rule that a recognizable corpse is never published without a name. It’s a good thing that there are house specific rules because different topics bring different kinds of issues and needs (UJF president 2020).
Most media organisations also have more general mission statements, which almost invariably refer to democratic values, independence, balance, pluralism, and so forth. Some individual media organisations in Finland have experimented with the use of an independent Ombudsperson in the past, but the practice has not become adopted by other leading news organisations. Instead, the public broadcaster Yle has a position called the head of journalistic standards and ethics, whose task is to support journalists and oversee the implementation of ethical standards.
In 2018, the leading news media houses launched a campaign where those who follow the CMM guidelines would display a “responsible journalism” logo to distinguish them from blogs and other non-journalistic information sources (see Indicator F4 – Internal rules for practice of newsroom democracy).
Most media houses in the sample also claimed to exercise some organised form or process of self-criticism. CMM resolutions are typically discussed together with the journalists involved, and sometimes with the whole newsroom. Professional journals published by the publishers’ and journalists’ associations also include debate on media ethics.
