British journalist brushes off Finnish reactions to Jokela analysis

Roger Boyes unrepentant over ruffled feathers

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By Ilkka Ahtiainen in Berlin
     
      Roger Boyes agrees to the interview without hesitation, even though he sees himself as persona non grata in Finland.
      "Yes, soon I will be more famous in your country than Adolf Hitler", he quips.
      Boyes, 55, is the correspondent for Germany and Eastern Europe of the British quality newspaper The Times. He is an experienced journalist, and Finland has been at the margins of his territory since the late 1970s.
      "I do not claim to be an expert on Finland. But I do have my links to Finland", he says on the sofa of his home in Berlin.
      Once, while studying the Swedish language, he ended up in the bath ward of Stockholm's Nacka Hospital.
      "I was there, and the Finns, who were treated like dirt by the Swedish boss."
      Boyes also became acquainted with Finland in the 1980s, while he was the Moscow correspondent. Cold War reporters would use both Helsinki and West Berlin as places of rest.
      Or places to have their wisdom teeth removed, as Boyes did.
      Last week it landed on him to give British readers background for the gruesome news from Finland: the Jokela massacre. "Similarities to other massacres - but this was a very Finnish affair" read the headline of his article.
     
The British were given an analysis of a grim, isolated arctic environment: a diagnosis of the negative impact of a dark winter on the human psyche, spiced with references to the Finnish national epic, the Kalevala.
      The article was streamlined text from a man who seems to be drawn to a psychological approach.
      The article angered many Finns. In a few days 250 comments appeared on the website of The Times. Most of them were from Finland and they were very angry indeed. Few Finnish journalists have ever managed that.
      A journalist's dream? Getting to communicate with an entire nation?
      "I do not believe that I am communicating with an entire nation. It was more like an enclosed community of some kind. There was something hysterical in the answers."
      "They did not want to tell their opinions, they wanted to kill me."
     
Boyes observed that some of the most intense critics were his own countrymen living in Finland - British.
      "A typical Stockholm syndrome. A man is the hostage of his Finnish wife and identifies with her thinking."
      Now that a few factual errors in the story have been corrected, Boyes feels that there is no reason for regret. On the contrary, he believes that he has hit the mark to some degree, as evidenced by the "allergic reactions" of the Finns.
      "People do not accept that any evil might come from within the community. It is always imported, in this case, caused by America, the Internet, or globalisation."
      "But still, this took place specifically in Finland. The environment that allowed this to happen is Finnish."
     
Boyes believes that he has discovered another reason for the allergy of the Finns.
      "Perhaps I should not make this comparison, because I will hurt people's feelings again", he starts.
      According to Boyes, there are societies on the outskirts of Europe, where trust in the local media is low.
      These include countries such as Romania and Hungary.
      People in these countries seek information from foreign media - reliable brands such as The Times, Boyes says. At the same time these people are nevertheless plagued by an inferiority complex.
      "They feel that they are treated with disdain in the foreign media, and therefore, react in an emotional manner."
     
But wait a minute, it is not a good idea to draw parallels between Finland and the former communist countries.
      "OK, OK, the comparison is shaky. Hungarians and Romanians do not trust their media, because they are owned by oligarchs, or are under the thumb of political parties."
      In his article on Jokela, Boyes made reference to the PISA study, which has shown the excellence of the Finnish educational system.
      "You have a brilliant educational machine. But are children measured on the basis of academic achievement alone, and not on the basis of human development?"
     
Very telling in the view of Roger Boyes were the comments of the teachers concerning Pekka-Eric Auvinen: he was an average pupil.
      "That was all that they had to say. They did not say that he was isolated, or that he had strange thoughts."
     
Would Boyes agree to a little game?
      If the Jokela massacre was a very Finnish affair, might Boyes be able to find anything very British in the Madeleine McCann case?
      "That's a bit harsh. You're trying to lead me into something stupid. How can we say anything about British society on the basis of the Madeleine case, when we don't know what happened? There's not even a body. You had nine of them."
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 18.11.2007
     
     
Translator's Note: The number of posts in response to Roger Boyes' original article and his subsequent reply to the critics has now topped 400. The number of times the words "simplistic", "half-baked", "polar bears" (a dig at standard ignorance of Finnish conditions), "tabloid drivel", and other even less flattering remarks cropped up probably exceeded even this, and these were only the posts that the Times Online moderators felt were fit to print. At least one writer openly challenged the journalist in just the fashion of this article, citing gruesome crimes occurring in the UK or to a British citizen and querying whether these were indeed "a very British affair". One Finnish blogger went a step further and posted his own sardonic response to the recent "happy-slapping" murder of a 34-year-old man in Liverpool, which was allegedly recorded by the teenage perpetrators on mobile phones. There were defenders, too, and those who charged that Finns are in denial or respond aggressively to any form of criticism of their pine and lakes paradise, just as they did over a recent Financial Times series on the country's economy. However, to some extent these charges are challenged by the response to an earlier celebrated incident when a Washington Post journalist painted an overly glossy portrait of the Finland he saw during a week-long visit. His blandishments were shot full of holes very quickly as people pointed out alternative and less appealing Finnish realities. Even this paled in comparison with the mocking laughter that greeted an infamous New York Times travel section piece that presented a glittering parallel-universe Helsinki that few locals recognised, and even claimed Finlandia Hall was a paragon of acoustic perfection. So Mr Boyes is in good company.


Links:
  Times On Line: Similarities to other massacres - but this was a very Finnish affair
  One abrupt online response to the article in The Times
  To balance things, Finns were equally scathing in their response to this flattering New York Times piece from 2006

ILKKA AHTIAINEN / Helsingin Sanomat
ilkka.ahtiainen@hs.fi