COMMENTARY: The (media) circus is coming to town

print this

By Tellervo Yrjämä-Rantinoja
     
      This month there will be an exceptional tidal surge in the flow of visitors to Helsinki. The prime ministers and foreign ministers of the other twenty-four member-states will want to exchange a few words with the prospective holder of the EU Presidency, as Finland gears up for its six-month stint from July to December..
      And that's not all. The leaders of the Council Presidency are also going to be wooed by those countries seeking admission to the Union, by EU commissioners, and by many others who would like to see their interests promoted during Finland's term at the helm.
      A similar string of high-level guests is also to be anticipated in town around the time of the pre-Christmas office parties, a week or two before the European Council summit to be held in Brussels in mid-December.
     
A hectic media circus surrounds the arrivals of the ministers and heads of government.
      Time is in short supply - these are not leisurely or lengthy visits - and the guests and their hosts cough up their terse messages into the microphones and the interpreters often steal the major part of even the briefest of press briefings.
     
When the French PM Dominique de Villepin made a short trip to Helsinki at the beginning of the week, a whole quarter of an hour was set aside for the press.
      The visitor, who was not stingy with his words, praised Finland as a pathfinder in the nuclear energy branch, and lauded the Finnish social model to the point where some listeners were seen to blush in embarrassment.
      His tight schedule then left time for only two questions, one each from the representatives of the Finnish and French media.
      A Finnish colleague asked about the EU Constitution and nuclear power. The French journalist took a more obviously "local" line: he wanted to hear the Prime Minister's comments on the French "Pentecost Solidarity" arrangement (introduced last year after a heatwave had killed thousands in 2003), in which people were to "work in" their normal Whit Monday holiday with a sizeable part of their earnings going to help the elderly and the disabled.
      Maybe there was a dash of Gallic humour in the question. Often when away on trips like this, guests are seen to be speaking to the audience at home. A 30-strong entourage of journalists had come along with de Villepin on his plane to Finland.
     
The French PM got off lightly. He was able to speak to his heart's content on topics that he had chosen himself, and he was not badgered with awkward questions like the future of the EU, the fate of the EU Constitution, or the scandals that have been raging around the Prime Minister's own head - most notably the "Clearstream affair".
      For de Villepin, mired in difficulties at home, and with French political pundits already mulling over his removal, the trip up north provided a welcome breathing-space.
     
In the case of press briefings of great-power leaders, the "full of sound-bites, signifying nothing" approach has been taken to its logical limit. The U.S. President George W. Bush selects questions from his trusted journalists in the White House press corps, picking the reporter out by his or her first name.
      In Finland, the same kind of bloated but empty atmosphere is familiar from presidential state- or working visits, even if the questions are not chosen in advance.
      To be fair, openness and media courage has grown from earlier days, when reporters would often repeat the politicians' messages like so many pet parrots. And yet there are still parrot-like features in political journalism today. When the questions are limited, the guests and the hosts can dictate the news or "the news". Again, the media often content themselves with trotting out the messages as an echo.
     
When there are too many air-filled info sessions, even the media outlets start to suffer from a kind of info-dyspepsia.
      Dictated briefings turn into a kind of force-feeding exercise. It is not sufficient to write simply that, say, the French Prime Minister or the President of the Palestinian National Authority paid a visit to Finland. If the visitor does not grant his own interviews, then one has to make do with the press conference. The wall of security minders around a high-level visitor prevents the quest for one's own news story.
      Transparency is one of the pet ideas of EU-Finland. The hosts could yank their visitors' chains at least to the extent of allowing press briefings to venture into matters of real substance.
      Of course it is perfectly possible that the vistors and their hosts do not always have anything of subtance or importance to relate. If the info is brimful with empty phrases, then the visit could reasonably be dismissed by journalists with a few sentences or could go completely unreported.
     
Appealing to the disaffected citizens of the European Union should be the politicians' number one priority.
      When the EU's popularity among its residents is at a low ebb, one might have imagined that the politicians would have a powerful urge to talk to the people.
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 10.6.2006
     
The writer is a journalist on the Helsingin Sanomat foreign desk.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  French PM hopes EU will wrap up constitution in October (6.6.2006)

Links:
  The Finnish EU Presidency Website
  Daily Telegraph: French stay home to snub Chirac´s "day of solidarity"

TELLERVO YRJÄMÄ-RANTINOJA / Helsingin Sanomat
tellervo.yrjama-rantinoja@hs.fi