Presidential candidates have been covered in the media for too long, too much and too lightly. Critical examination has been overshadowed by cooking and favorite songs.
I don't enjoy nothing more than a good Finnish election campaign. Municipal elections, EU elections, presidential elections, parliamentary elections, I'm not picky. It's wonderful to go out and talk to candidates, supporters and campaigners and meet those rascals who voluntarily stand in a cold market handing out leaflets in the center of a gloomy provincial town.
I like free things, especially during the election season. I have an excellent blue bucket from the coalition, which is still in regular use, a couple of Rkp pens and a handy fridge magnet. I've eaten all kinds of free pea soup in the city center to persuhodars and Eva Biaudet brand chocolates.
But this current presidential election campaign has been going on for so long – some zealots started warming up the people even before Midsummer – that I'm starting to get tired of the whole election.
At least some media outlets seem to agree with me. That's what I can conclude from my recent review.
Central Finland I had to browse a long way before I found an article about how candidates present their pets on social media. Only one election podcast advertisement was found on the Nurmijärvi Uutisten website.
On the day of my research, Ilkka-Pohjalainen had only one STT article, Vasabladet didn't even have that. Presidential election stories were not among the magazine's ten most popular articles of the previous week. Yle also did not have any election articles in the top ten of its websites.
While many other media outlets seem to be inundated with election content, that sound you hear, dear readers, comes from scraping the bottom of the barrel. It arises when desperate front-line editors give the green light to any proposal as the campaign drags on.
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That sound comes from scraping the bottom of the barrel.
Ilta-Sanomat published a story about which cars the candidates drive (certainly very important information), but Helsingin Sanomat seems to go to great lengths to find these little stories.
There have been articles in the magazine about what sports candidates and their spouses play, what their hometowns are like, what books they recommend, and what the toughest negotiations they've been involved in were—well, it can be relevant to the job.
The other magazines don't give us mercy either. For example, they have asked candidates' spouses intrusive questions about how politicians show love to their partners. It can be an awkward topic for a 70-year-old candidate who has only been with a girlfriend half his age for a few months. As also for the candidate of “traditional Finnish values”, who was caught by the fact that he has a child with another woman. Or to the former foreign minister, who met his spouse when he was in his forties and she was 19. But hey, love is love, don't judge!
on MTV I found myself immersing myself in a video where Harry Harkimo to cook fish. MTV seems to have an obsession with cooking up presidential candidates. I interviewed during the 2012 election season Good morning Finland -program, and they had to prepare their favorite food, which we ate together. It's not very natural to eat at seven in the morning Paavo Lipponen meat stew or Paavo Arhinmäki vegan beetroot breakfast.
The preferences and backgrounds of the presidential candidates generate many kinds of headlines.
The strangest random election event – or maybe just the strangest for mums, even those who have lived a quarter of their lives in Finland – is The song of my life Above.
In the program, a group of late middle-aged men humiliated themselves on national television by choosing a song and saying something “meaningful” about it in front of the audience. For a cynic like me, the format doesn't really reveal anything about the candidates, it just shows which campaign team understands the game best and comes up with the most emotional story to make the candidate seem appealing in as many directions as possible.
Last after the year's parliamentary elections, we found out that some politicians had said and written very offensive things, participated in far-right demonstrations, collected Nazi symbols or said racist things in parliamentary speeches. But the media only investigated those issues after the election, when the horse had already run away and it was too late to lock the stable door.
Of course, some articles are written. HS did a good series of behind-the-scenes stuff, but it has been overshadowed by cooking, sauna and TV music shows.
Finland the president has a fairly narrow, though important, constitutional role in some aspects of foreign policy and defense—although most of the work seems to consist of visiting factories and having coffee with the elderly.
In Finland, we could perhaps settle for a shorter campaign, during which the candidates' skills in important defense and foreign policy issues would be studied more deeply.
Then surprising things could be revealed – and they should be told before the elections and not until after them.
The author is the digital editor-in-chief of Euronews reporting from Finland.
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