The Keskisuomalainen, being Central Finland’s only major newspaper enjoys a true monopoly on the news, as do the other major newspapers that reside in cities scattered throughout the Finnish state.
It might seem strange to the Tundra Tabloids’ non-Finnish readers who reside in cities where they are used to being able to choose from more than one major city paper. But here in Finland, there is only room for one major paper in each large city, including the nation’s capital of Helsinki. When a city paper makes an editorial decision to exclude one source of news that it has trusted and relied on in the past, for another, the ramifications for such a decision can be great.
The editorial board for the KS’ foreign news section, has chosen to jettison the seasoned Finnish free lance journalist, Semy Kahan, in favor of the global news agency IPS, for all of its in-depth reporting on Israel and the Palestinians. Kahan is an excellent journalist, whose fair and interesting reports will be sorely missed. Too bad, though he could be very critical of Israel at times, he was nonetheless fair and at the time, the only source for anything objective about the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians.
The IPS is now Central Finland’s main source for anything about the ME, and it appears that the journalistic goal for this type of news agency is one of activism, writing the worlds wrongs through the pen. In the Tundra Tabloids opinion their message is clear, there could be no other meaning to the IPS’s own motto:
“Journalism and Communication for Change”
Just yesterday, before turning the actual pages of the Keskisuomalainen paper, I reviewed the IPS’s Middle East section, and if the KS were to publish one of the stories present, I figured that they would publish this one, and I was right. The connection was of course there, the Finns love their flowers, and in spite of the Finnish media’s over reporting on the Middle East conflict, the majority of Finns still have very little accurate information of the situation.
The article brazenly places all the blame on Israel for the problems of the Gaza Strip and the nursery that grows flowers mainly for export. It’s all Israel’s fault. Check out the first line, it’s a doozy!
“After generations of occupation, Valentine’s Day has meant little in the Gaza Strip. But the flowers that lovers presented in Europe have.”
What rubbish! This is pure propagandizing under the guise of…..gag… journalism, and it’s revolting as it’s farcical. For instance, what most Finns don’t know, (and those who read exclusively the Finnish monopolized media most likely never will) is that even though the Islamist run entity in the Gaza Strip, lovingly referred to here at the Tundra Tabloids as Hamastan, loathes the western holiday of Valentines Day for being un-Islamic, it has turned a blind eye to the celebration of the western holiday.
Even if the blockade of Gaza’s borders with Israel had not been implemented, Valentines Day would still have meant …something inside of Gaza. The journalist propagandist Mohammed Omer, is just spinning tales and the Finnish media laps it up. Perhaps the journalist is an Islamist himself and was reporting from the Hamas perspective? Here’s another gem:
“Once Israel closed the border crossings, it also ended access to markets outside of Gaza.”
What about that long border with Egypt? If there is no access to international markets, and if this guy considers himself to be an objective journalist, why is there no mention of the Egyptian border, and their (the Egyptians) decision to keep it tightly closed? I’ll tell you why, because the chief aim of the article was to criticize Israel. How nice is that? *L* KGS
