Foreign Ministry line has eroded media confidence in the wake of tsunami

Ministry to consider alternative approach in catastrophe situations

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The tight line on information flow adopted by the Ministry for Foreign Affairs in the days immediately following the underwater earthquake and tsunami in the Indian Ocean has eroded the confidence felt towards the ministry by print and electronic media outlets alike. A number of outlets are considering the reliability of "official channels" and the use of alternative sources in such crisis situations.
      In the first hours and days as the disaster unfolded, the Foreign Ministry maintained a firm line, choosing only to pass on confirmed information, although the situation on the ground rendered this information both spare and ultimately tragically misleading. The image that emerged in public was that there had been no Finnish victims of the tsunami waves.
     
"Information from the authorities has never been the whole truth, but in future we shall almost certainly be giving greater weight to such things as SMS messages and to unofficial channels of information such as the Internet", says Ari Järvinen, head of TV news and current affairs at the Finnish Broadcasting Company (YLE).
      The Finnish News Agency (STT) is also contemplating whether the wire service should alter its position on official sources. Editor-in-chief Atte Jääskeläinen believes that the problem is one of what is deemed to be "confirmed information".
      "Are we to simply say that someone has been confirmed as dead, or also that several hundred people may be missing or unaccounted for?" asks Jääskeläinen.
      Helsingin Sanomat’s editor-in-chief Janne Virkkunen believes the Ministry for Foreign Affairs knew more than it put out into the public domain. "They should at least have said that it was probable that some Finns were dead or missing. Action like this is certainly not going to increase faith in ministerial statements."
     
Under-Secretary of State Markus Lyra from the Foreign Ministry points out that when the catastrophe struck, the ministry had no better access to information sources than the media themselves.
      In the case of a natural disaster such as this, the ministry’s channels of information are not as efficient as for example in political upheavals.
      "We have to base our information on official sources, and it must be possible to parse this information correctly. When we say that we do not know whether any Finns are among the dead, this does not mean that there are no fatalities."
      Matti Apunen, editor-in-chief of the Tampere broadsheet Aamulehti, believes nevertheless that the Foreign Ministry should take a leaf out of the National Bureau of Investigation’s book.
      The NBI, Finland’s central criminal police unit, went ahead and published a list of the persons believed missing in Thailand, even though it was known from the outset that the list was imprecise and would be revised.
      "I’ve been astonished at the arrogance that has characterised the Foreign Ministry’s actions. In a situation like this, the media and the ministry should work together in order to improve the spread of information", says Apunen.
      "Journalists had a significant role in the clarifying of the situation. I hope that the various media would be absorbed into the machinery with which the authorities sort out crises of this nature."
     
Secretary of State Arto Mansala, the highest-ranking permanent civil servant at the Ministry for Foreign Affairs, stressed on Thursday that the provision of information on the crisis in the Bay of Bengal could not be compared with the normal work of the ministry. He believes that the system has hitherto worked well.
      Mansala considers it is possible that the ministry’s communications policy will change in the future.
      "We will be holding our own internal inquiry, in which the supply of information [to the public and the media] will be a salient part. We will be examining whether in future scenarios we can use other than official sources."


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Parliamentarians discuss information flow of Asian disaster (13.1.2005)
  Foreign Ministry spokesman denies strategy of playing down tsunami impact (13.1.2005)
  Ahtisaari group not looking to place blame on anybody (12.1.2005)

Helsingin Sanomat