Editorial|The parliamentary working group deciding on Yle’s funding reached an impasse in July, from which they are trying to find a way out. The danger is that the decision on Yle’s funding will be transferred from the parliament to the government.
Yleisradio returns to the decision-makers’ table, when the chairman of the parliamentary Yle working group Matias Marttinen (kok) sets out to find a way out of the impasse that the working group ended up in in the summer. If no solution is found, Yle’s funding may have to be decided by the board.
After the parliamentary elections, it seemed likely that Yle would face huge savings, as both the coalition and the Basic Finns demanded cuts to Yle’s budget of well over one hundred million euros in the last election period.
The need for cuts is justified by the fact that, in a tight economic situation, Yle must save like everyone else. The company’s funding is tied to the index, so it will rise automatically, unless otherwise decided.
If Yle is compared to other Nordic broadcasting companies, its budget relative to population is the largest after Norway’s NRK, and compared to the national product, it is the largest. Other Finnish media houses – including Sanoma, which publishes Helsingin Sanom – have emphasized that Yle’s free content distorts media competition. The problem has worsened when the financial situation of newspapers has tightened.
Even within Yle, it has been assumed that savings are coming, even though they have been publicly opposed. There are plenty of ways to influence Yle, as it can suggest that the savings fall on destinations dear to the general public or certain parties. Recently, Yle’s role in the nation’s security of supply has been brought to the fore.
If Yle’s savings had been justified on economic grounds, there would not necessarily have been a big dispute, but Perus Finns have muddied the waters with attacks against Yle’s line. In this situation, the funding cut has started to look like an attempt to influence Yle’s journalism.
Mfor a long time, the work of the Yle group led by artti didn’t seem to be moving anywhere. That’s why it was a surprise that the chairman got Perussuomalaiset to join the agreement in June, in which the index freezes and the increase in value added tax would have cut Yle’s spending trend so that the company’s budget in 2027 would be about ten percent smaller than in the current career.
The performance was at least tolerable for Yle. A big ax would not have been needed, as the required expenditure adjustment would largely be handled by retirements. The company considered it especially important that even basic Finns would accept the principle according to which parliamentary parties agree on Yle’s funding unanimously. If the funding was decided by the board, it would give the board at that time a stick with which to put pressure on Yle. The mere possibility would cast a shadow over Yle’s independence. The report also contained some welcome guidelines on, for example, opening up Yle’s use of money to the outside world.
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Yle’s parliamentary foundation must not be broken.
Surprisingly, the Left Alliance decided to drop the proposal. The greens followed behind, even if they had hardly settled alone with cross rollers. The Left Alliance justified its position with a strict schedule for savings, but the background was dissatisfaction with how the report was made. Chairman Marttinen twisted the agreement with basic Finns and brought it to the other parties as a take-it-or-leave-it matter.
You can understand the frustration of the Left Alliance, but it was not a wise decision. The collapse of the compromise suited basic Finns well – especially when the collapse of the agreement could be blamed on the left-wing coalition.
Pchairman Marttinen is now trying to revive his presentation. It’s not easy. The positions of basic Finns may have been strengthened by the discussion on Yle’s diversity training in the summer. The transfer of Yle’s funding to the government would not be as big a problem for basic Finns as for other parties.
Basic Finns therefore have hardly any desire to be flexible, but it is difficult for the party to reject a piece of paper that it has already acknowledged. If the basic Finns get the wooden sign, the left-wing coalition will have to change its position. It would certainly taste bitter, but the party can use as a justification the statement of Yle’s program workers in August, in which a “lean agreement” was considered better than the end of the parliamentary tradition.
It is difficult for the Left Alliance to defend Yle harder than the Yle people themselves. Yle’s parliamentary foundation must not be broken. That is why it is now necessary to find an agreement to the dispute.
The editorials are HS’s positions on a current topic. The articles are prepared by HS’s editorial department, and they reflect the magazine principle line.
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