Ombudsman for Children wants study on media handling of Jokela shootings

Petition alleging journalistic misconduct to be presented to ministers

Maria Kaisa Aula

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The Mannerheim League for Child Welfare, and the Ombudsman for Children in Finland, Maria Kaisa Aula, say that criticism raised by young people in Jokela on the way the massacre at Jokela School was handled in some sectors of the Finnish media, should be taken seriously.
      Aula and the Mannerheim League propose that the Council for Mass Media in Finland (CMM) should take the initiative in examining news reporting on the Jokela incident. The council could assess if there is reason to draw up new instructions on confronting people, especially young people under the age of 18, in a crisis situation.
      The Mannerheim League says that most of the journalists covering Jokela exercised good professional ethics, but that some also went too far.
     
Mannerheim League programme director, psychologist Marie Rautava emphasises that considerable discretion is needed in reporting news on traumatic events. She feels that people who have undergone shocking events should not be interviewed. "This especially applies to children and young people."
      Aula points out that in Norway, journalists' rules include a request to exercise special consideration when confronting people who are in morning, or in shock.
     
CMM vice chairman Jari Lindholm directed those asking questions to read his blog where he had put up an answer to the request on Tuesday.
      On the website, Lindholm says that the proposal is a good one, but that the process would take a number of months. He noted that the matter would proceed slowly in the council; the presidium would have to consider the matter, and that if some kind of a statement were to be given, the writing of a draft, discussing it, and making the necessary compromises would mean that a possible statement might be ready by the summer.
      "The topic would be difficult, because methods of news gathering are a taboo for the media", Lindholm writes.
      Lindholm welcomes the idea of amending journalists' guidelines, but he says that the work would take at least a year.
      "The Jokela anniversary would come and go, victims would be hunted down again, and the media would congratulate itself for a job well done. The earth would thus turn, until a new tragedy came, and someone would remember to demand that the CMM react quickly to the matter."
      In the latest issue of the weekly news magazine Suomen Kuvalehti, Lindholm himself denounces the "grief porn" that he saw in reporting on Jokela.
     
Four government ministers have agreed to receive a petition initiated by students criticising the "wallowing" in the tragedy that they felt was done by some media.
      The petition alleges that traumatised school pupils and others affected by the tragedy were confronted "with cameras sticking out", and that people's suffering and grief were not respected.
      Receiving the petition will be Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen, Minister of Social Services Paula Risikko Minister of Education Sari Sarkomaa, and Minister of Communications Suvi Lindén.

More on this subject:
 Police establish minute-to-minute time line of movements of Jokela killer

Previously in HS International Edition:
  Jokela: a peaceful little village thrust into world spotlight (9.11.2007)

Links:
  Council for Mass Media in Finland
  Ombudsman for Children in Finland
  Mannerheim League for Child Welfare

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