In general, journalists are not granted special status under Finnish law, except for legislation specifying the responsibilities of editors-in-chief. The confidentiality of sources is guaranteed in the Freedom of Speech Act (Ministry of Justice, 2003) and the professional code of ethics (CMM, 2014). Furthermore, new legislation is planned to protect people in vulnerable professions – teachers, health workers, and journalists, among others – from increasing threats and from being targeted through social media platforms (see Indicator F11 – Protection of journalists against (online) harassment). From the perspective of news media, new legislation would prevent the gagging of critical journalism from reporting on non-democratic and racist actions and opinions (Heijari, 2020).
The political parallelism that permeated much of the press and public broadcasting in the second half of the twentieth century has all but vanished. Almost all leading news media organisations now place emphasis on political independence. Despite this, however, it is quite possible and perhaps even obvious that both open and public as well as non-open and non-public relations between the powerholders and the media co-exist.
A permanent topic of discussion is the standing of the national public service broadcaster Yle. Its official status is based on a special Act of Parliament (Ministry of Transport and Communications, 2019), its Administrative Council is nominated by parliament, and its functions are financed by a special tax (Finnish Government, 2012), paid by all citizens. In principle, this potentially makes Yle vulnerable to all kinds of political pressures. This was tested in the 2010s a couple of times, ultimately leading to changes in the Yle’s journalistic leadership (see Indicator F6 – Company rules against external influence on newsroom/editorial staff). In general, due to a wide-based parliamentary consensus, Yle has, however, been able to enjoy relative independence from political powerholders. On the other hand, the commercial media – whose one-time spokesperson coined the term “an eternal Christmas” to describe Yle’s privileges – has continuously challenged this status because of its tax-based funding (HS, 2011).
In the private media sector, a few non-media companies count among the owners of the leading news media organisations. Most national and regional media outlets are owned by one of the major media conglomerates, mostly Finnish but some also by Swedish media houses, such as Bonnier (a major Nordic private media company) and Telia (a telecom company, majority-owned by the Swedish government). Most local newspapers in Finland are still owned either by a relatively small company, families, or other private individuals with historical roots in publishing (see also Indicator E1 – Media ownership concentration national level).
Rather than ownership or other direct economic ties, with regard to independence in relation to powerful economic actors, respondents suggested that problems arose from the strict information management and lack of openness of large corporations, which are not bound by statute with the same transparency requirements as public authorities.
In line with the 2011 report (Karppinen et al., 2011), many of the respondents also noted that journalists themselves should be more critical and that more resources were needed to fulfil the watchdog role as well against private companies and economic powerholders.
