The principle of journalistic autonomy is a cornerstone of the ethical guidelines for journalists by CMM. Following that, rule 2 requires that “decisions concerning the content of media must be made in accordance with journalistic principles. The power to make such decisions must not, under any circumstances, be surrendered to any party outside the editorial office” (CMM, 2014). The current wording of this rule, from 2014, is even stricter than the previous one from 2005. As it was a decade ago (Karppinen et al., 2011), all the leading news media organisations are committed to these guidelines, and according to the interviews with the UJF as well as editors-in-chief, the principle of journalistic autonomy continues to enjoy high esteem not only among journalists, but even among the publishers and owners of media companies.
In the previous MDM report, there was some evidence of a growing tendency to combine the posts of the editors-in-chief and publishers. However, it seems that the experiment did not turn out to be successful, as all the papers in the sample that tried this kind of arrangement have abandoned it by now. Already in 2013, the board of Sanoma Corporation nominated a new editor-in-chief for HS, who was allowed to concentrate on journalistic decisions. Meanwhile, Borgåbladet was merged with Östra Nyland in 2015, and the editor-in-chief of the new paper Östnyland was also the head of news, but no longer the publisher. Since 2018, Iltalehti has had a separate publisher and two editors-in-chief: one for news and another for feature content.
The practical organisation of the separation of the newsroom from the ownership largely depends on the type of media organisation in question. In some cases, such as the commercial broadcaster MTV3, the separation is explicitly mentioned in the company values or other formal documents. In many cases, however, there are no formal rules on the separation of the newsroom from the management, outside of the general professional code of ethics (as was the case in 2011; see Karppinen et al., 2011).
There is usually no formal representation of journalists on the board of media companies – of the sample media corporations, none except Ylehad journalists on the board. Although the board nominates the editor-in-chief without any formal input from journalists, in practice, the editor-in-chief must have the confidence of the journalists to be successful. Advertising departments are generally strictly separated from the newsroom and do not interfere with journalistic work. However, in case of the local newspaper examined, the small number of interviewees made it evident that there was contact and some cooperation between the newsroom and the advertising department:
The advertising sales staff sit in the same room, so there are communications going on. The advertisers might say “there is a new car sale store opening soon “ (… hoping we would cover it). There is a small collaboration going across the borders but no pressure, it’s informal. I have no memory of advertisers influencing the newsroom (ÖN editor-in-chief 2020.)
The independence of the state-owned public service media Yle has been a permanently contested question in terms of both organisational structure and individual news items. This has been happening since at least 1948, when a new law, “Lex Jahvetti”, was introduced that transferred the company from de-facto government control to parliamentary control. The independence from the government and political parties was emphasised on all levels of the legal definitions, company values, and internal editorial guidelines of Yle. This system was put to the test in 2015, when a newly elected right-wing government wanted to reconsider the funding and remit of Yle, which had been agreed in the parliament only two years earlier (Karppinen & Ala-Fossi, 2017). After a new parliamentary working group (Satonen group) was able to reach a new consensus in 2016, most of the political pressure on Yle was relieved. However, later in the same year, Prime Minister Juha Sipilä ended up in a dispute with Yle News over a single news story, which was then scaled back (see Indicator F6 – Company rules against external influence on newsroom/editorial staff). As a result, CMM gave Yle a reprimand for breaking the code of conduct for journalists in Finland (Yle, 2017).
