Veteran editor: Media at pinnacle of power
Researcher: Media acts “like shoal of fish when predator attacks”
Veteran journalist and retired newspaper editor Risto Uimonen believes that the media even in Finland has taken its constitutionally-guaranteed roles to the limit.
Uimonen says that political journalism in Finland has turned form being a lap-dog of those in power to being a guard dog of power.
Uimonen’s new book Median mahti (“The Power of the Media”) was published on Monday. Its main argument is that the Finnish media is at the pinnacle of its powers right now.
The controversy over election campaign funding has a great significance in Uimonen’s view, because the revelations are making political practice more open.
According to Uimonen, growth in the power of the media is the result of the massive growth of the information stream. In big news events, the different media follow one another, which leads to a “megaphone phenomenon”: The focus on one topic coming out of every channel is so great that the noise will obscure everything else.
As a result, many traditionally important topics of the news will be left with too little attention. Uimonen lamented that the sharp increase in indebtedness of the state has not been covered sufficiently by the media.
In his book Uimonen lists 36 cases in which a person in a responsible position has resigned after being pilloried in public.
Meanwhile, Erkki Karvonen, a professor of information studies and communications at the University of Oulu, describes the behaviour of the media through a different phenomenon: the behaviour of animals in large groups.
“When a predator attacks a shoal of fish, the fish form artful shapes and protect themselves. This happens even though nobody is a leader. The fish are able to behave in a complicated-looking manner by applying simple rules: keep an eye on your neighbour and look where the neighbour is going. The media has no common leadership or conductor that would make it behave as if it were a single order.”
Karvonen sees the power of the media as a recent phenomenon.
He refers to a study by Swedes Kent Asp and Peter Esaiasson, who argue that the media process has moved forward in Sweden since the 1960s in three distinct phases.
At first, politicians found that it was no longer possible to make contact with the people at workers’ halls and town squares. The easiest way is to go through the media.
In the 1970s the Swedish media became independent of political parties and got more freedom and critical power to act.
“In the third phase, in the 1980s, this led to a situation in which politicians had to begin adapting to the logic of the media - to think about what the media likes.”
Karvonen says that the same applies to Finland, with a delay of about a decade.
Helsingin Sanomat
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| 13.10.2009 - TODAY |
 Veteran editor: Media at pinnacle of power |
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