Foreign Ministry spokesman denies strategy of playing down tsunami impact

Yrjö Länsipuro

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At no time in the immediate aftermath of the Asian tsunami did the Ministry of Foreign Affairs exercise a strategy of trying to keep people calm by putting out overly optimistic statements, claims senior Foreign Ministry official Yrjö Länsipuro.
      Länsipuro, the ministry’s press and culture head, was among several persons taking part in a panel discussion on YLE’s TV1 on Wednesday evening. The discussion dwelt in some detail on the information passed to the public by the Foreign Ministry and the media in the first 24 to 48 hours after the tsunami struck, with particular reference to the condition of Finnish holidaymakers in two affected areas - Sri Lanka and Southern Thailand.
      Länsipuro noted that the role of the Foreign Ministry in such a situation is to provide confirmed information, in other words material that has been checked and corroborated.
      "We are not about to tell people that 'We reckon there must be a lot of people dead down there'", said Länsipuro, stressing that it would be irresponsible to speculate in such circumstances.
     
The chaotic and fragmented nature of the information coming in from Thailand was clearly a factor in shaping the image that Finns got of the disaster in the initial stages. According to the media representatives on the programme, the Foreign Ministry’s cautious line had a knock-on effect on their own reporting. Merja Ylä-Anttila, Head of News at the commercial TV-channel MTV3, said she felt that the ministry’s careful and calming tone lasted for quite some time.
      Atte Jääskeläinen, the editor-in-chief of the Finnish News Agency (STT), noted that the weighting given to information provided by "official sources" and the authorities is large relative to that accorded eye-witness accounts (of which there were a number, even in the confused early hours), and that the official line therefore influenced the initial conclusions on the extent of the catastrophe - and on its impact on the Finnish population - that were drawn by the media.
     
"Already on Sunday  [the 26th December], Finnish eye-witnesses had provided the sort of descriptions of what had happened that still hold completely true. This information was also disseminated, but it has to be said that in a situation such as this it requires a considerable measure of courage to reach the decision that when the official Finnish channels are saying that Finns are not known to have died or have been injured, that the conclusion to be drawn is that for certain a good many Finns are among the dead", said Jääskeläinen.
      Länsipuro, who is a former journalist himself, pointed out that the media should not be expected to wait for some special dispensation from the Foreign Ministry to be able to report on the situation.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Ahtisaari group not looking to place blame on anybody (12.1.2005)
  Divers website gets nearly a million hits in days after tsunami (5.1.2005)

Helsingin Sanomat