Media|The focus of the complaint was the writings of the nickname “riika” in the guest book of the Scripta blog and one writing that referred to a gun and a commuter train.
Public the council (JSN) has given the word to Helsingin Sanomat acquittal decision in a case where the complainant was the current chairman of Basic Finns and the Minister of Finance Riikka Purra (p.s.).
The council discussed two articles published by HS in March of the current year, which referred to the online writing of the name “riika” in the comment section of the Scripta blog in 2008. Scripta is Jussi Halla-ahon (ps) founded blog.
In the complaint, Riikka Purra considered that HS had presented the writing of “riika” in a misleading way or without sufficient context. However, according to the Council, it was a matter of limitation to which the media has the right.
Complaint in the center was a sentence from the column written by the pseudonym “riika”, which read like this: “If I were given a gun, there would be dead bodies even on the commuter train, you see.”
In another HS case before the council, the interviewee presented an interpretation according to which the phrase refers to immigrants. In another story, the sentence was violently described as “fantasizing”.
According to Purra’s complaint, the context of writing the nickname “riika” was a threatening situation that happened on a commuter train and the writing “opposed the idea that all women in Finland should be armed so that they could protect themselves from gender-based violence”.
Editor-in-Chief of HS Erja Yläjärvi stated in his reply to the council that alongside the individual quote, there is a wider context of the entire nickname “Rika”, consisting of almost two hundred messages, which the paper has processed as a whole.
According to the editor-in-chief, a truthful perception of the events as a whole, i.e. the part of the name “Rika” in it, has emerged as a whole.
In its solution JSN stated that the nickname “riika’s” weapon comment was ambiguous and it was possible to interpret it in the way described in the stories, regardless of what the author had intended to say.
The council also stated that HS had discussed Purra’s old online writings in several stories already in the summer of 2023 and told where the original writings could be found.
According to the council, HS had not violated good journalistic practice in the stories and gave an acquittal decision. The decision and the arguments of the parties can be read in full at this link on the JSN website.
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