Many of today’s papers devote space on their front pages to the fall-out from the weekend’s gun attacks in Copenhagen, which left two people dead and five injured. Helsingin Sanomat carries five pages of analysis of the Europe-wide terror threat. “Attacks are planned in prison”, the headline reads, referring not only to the Danish shootings but also January’s killings in Paris and previous attempted incidents in the UK and Norway.
Elsewhere, experts tell the paper that Finland’s lack of visible participation in anti-terror campaigns abroad means the country is less of a target of hatred among those seeking to carry out terrorist acts. All the more so, the paper says, because Finnish cartoonists or newspapers have not been involved in publishing caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed, unlike in Sweden or Denmark.
But a spokesman for Finland’s security forces, Supo, insists this does not mean there is no threat in Finland. “Those protecting factors in Finland are gradually eroding,” he says, warning that terror attacks are becoming more difficult to predict, as individuals are now more likely to act alone.
Economic woes
Iltalehti carries news of the latest economic growth figures which have just been released by the EU’s statistics bureau Eurostat. Across the union the average rate of growth was 1.4 percent last year, with the economies of Hungary, Germany and Spain leading the rise.
Unsurprisingly, the beleaguered Greek economy was ranked right down at the bottom of the table, having contracted by 0.2 percent in 2014. But the paper points out that there are still two countries which fared even worse – and one of those was Finland, whose economy shrunk by 0.3 percent.
Among the factors contributing to Finland’s limp performance were the fall in Nokia’s share price, and economic problems in Russia, the paper says. But the figures make grim reading for Finland’s governing parties just weeks away from a general election.
The pan-EU forecast for 2015 predicts further growth, albeit tampered by the effects of sanctions with Russia.
The country at the very bottom of the 2014 table was Cyprus, which experienced 0.7 percent of negative growth last year, the paper says.
Yle criticism
A decision by Yle to drop one of its longest-running current affairs programmes gets widespread coverage across many papers today.
Helsingin Sanomat first broke the news yesterday that at the end of the year, Yle will pull the plug on Ajankohtainen Kakkonen, a magazine discussion show which has been going since 1969 and which carries reports from Finland and abroad.
The story makes the front page splash on Ilta-Sanomat this morning, with the paper reporting that the production team were in shock on hearing that the 46-year-old favourite is coming to an end. An Yle manager tells the paper that the show’s viewing figure average of 400,000 was not bad, but that the audience had got smaller over the years.
The plan is to replace it with more “theme nights”, where an audience of experts and members of the public discuss social issues. Yle also wants to attract more of an online audience – and announced yesterday it will also scrap TV broadcasts of its Silminnäkijä (“Eyewitness”) documentary and investigative series, replacing it with purely online content.
The moves generated strong reactions from readers, many of whom commented that the loss of what’s seen as quality programme making makes them wonder why they pay their Yle tax. “Social media doesn’t replace professional journalism,” one commenter in Ilta-Sanomat says.
