Media | Iltalehti completely removed 33 of its articles on the war in Ukraine – “unethical activity” in the assistant’s work

Evening newspaper removed a total of 33 articles about the war in Ukraine from its website on Tuesday. The articles include news, analysis and articles written in diary format. The newspaper first announced that it had removed 24 stories, but a little later the number of stories removed increased to 33.

The stories were written by Iltalehti’s Ukrainian assistant, who, according to IL, has worked at the newspaper in various roles for ten years.

Some of the photos in the assistant’s stories were taken at different times and in different places than claimed in the story, Iltalehti says on his website.

Reached by HS Iltalehti’s editor-in-chief Perttu Kauppinen says that an external request for clarification about the authenticity of the photos started the inspection process. He says that the photos sold by the assistant were found on other sites as well, which raised doubts about their originality.

Kauppinen says that the assistant’s work involved unethical behavior, by which he refers to the fact that some of the photos provided by the assistant were not original.

“We decided to delete the stories when we discovered that some of his [avustajan] of the photos provided were not taken by him, but were found elsewhere, i.e. they were not where he claimed they were.”

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“We discovered that some of the photos were not taken by the assistant himself.”

Because not all of the pictures in the assistant’s stories were original, Iltalehti ended up deleting all the stories related to the assistant’s reporting on Ukraine, in which it could not verify the reported information.

“So we don’t have information that in them [avustajan kirjoittamissa] there would have been no errors or fabrications in the stories themselves.”

Kauppinen, however, states that due to a lack of trust, it was decided to delete all the texts.

Some of the articles written by the assistant were still published on IL’s website when Iltalehti announced the removal of the first articles.

For example, in May 2023 Iltalehti published a report written by an assistant from the front near Bahmut, which contained very loose language and extremely detailed descriptions of the events. This is one of the deleted stories.

Assistant had already been employed by Iltalehti for ten years. He started writing articles for the newspaper after Russia invaded Ukraine.

The assistant’s employment with Iltalehti will not continue.

According to Kauppinen, the assistant had good contacts and good access to everywhere in Ukraine. According to Kauppinen, there has been no reason to suspect anything unethical in his activities before.

According to Kauppinen, texts whose author works abroad and which are difficult for the editor to check can only be ordered from reliable authors.

on Twitter Kauppinen says that Iltalehti has also used another Ukrainian journalist as an assistant.

“No ambiguities have been found in the content he provided, but we will continue to investigate,” Kauppinen writes.

The media chairman of the self-regulatory body Public Speech Council (JSN). Eero Hyvönen says that deleting a story is a matter at the editor-in-chief’s discretion, but that alone is not enough to correct, for example, incorrect information, but errors should also be identified.

“It’s a good start to tell [juttujen poistamisesta], but it still requires a continuation. About errors, you need to tell us more precisely what the error is and how it was corrected,” says Hyvönen.

According to him, Iltalehti’s description of the errors contained in the deleted stories sounds like essential factual errors.

The journalist’s instructions section 20 states that “to correct an error, it is not enough to remove the incorrect information or story, but the public must be informed about the error and how and when it was corrected”.

JSN has outlined the removal of online chats as well in the statement issued in 2018. However, the statement in question mainly concerns articles that have already been published for a long time.

“This seems to be, at least for the most part, fairly recent stories where the editor-in-chief has decision-making power,” says Hyvönen.

According to Hyvönen, similar story deletions are not unusual, but in the case of Iltalehti, the scale is exceptional.

“This is quite a large amount, and then there is this war in Ukraine, which is such a topic that it is of primary importance that the facts be kept or their uncertainty be admitted,” says Hyvönen.

Hyvönen says that he understands the reasons given for removing the articles, but hopes that Iltalehti will keep the removed articles in case a complaint is made to JSN.