It’s a side issue that the punning should have been allowed, just like the making fun of Finns should be.
The sotry here is, that the HS staff deemed it was possible for them to make fun of Estonians because they’re Leftists, who believe ‘club membership’ is synonymous with anti-bigotry, so anything they do could never be misconstrued as being bigoted. It’s pure irony that they could now face being censured for anti-Estonian bigotry.
NOTE: The ‘media watchdog’ are a gaggle of toothless hacks, the state of Israel, the only Jewish country in the world, is regularly lambasted, delegitmized and impugned by the Finnish media and the Council for the Mass Media in Finland has never taken action against some of the worst offenders, even the HS.
Media watchdog sees complaints spike over HS Estonian survey
The Council for the Mass Media in Finland is set to rule on a controversial online poll published by Helsingin Sanomat. The poll, which was quickly removed after an outcry, prompted 15 complaints to Finland’s media watchdog.
An aborted attempt to find a new nickname for Estonians has prompted a flurry of complaints to Finland’s media watchdog. The survey was published, then abandoned on Saturday by Finland’s biggest newspaper, Helsingin Sanomat.
“We’ve had around 15 complaints in a couple of days, based on article 26 of our code which states human dignity must be respected,” said Ilkka Vänttinen, general secretary of the council. “The relevant part is that nobody’s ethnic background can be covered in a derogatory way or without good reason.”
The HS article included a list of reader-suggested nicknames for Estonians, some of which were a little too near the knuckle for many in the paper’s online audience. After the President of Estonia Toomas Hendrik Ilves expressed his disbelief on Twitter, the paper removed the online poll and the editor apologised in Finnish, English and Estonian.
Vänttinen says that the chair of the council will decide next week on whether the organisation needs to rule on the complaints. The reaction has been above average for an individual story, according to Vänttinen.
