Finland’s immigrants seek their place in the media

Reilumedia welcomes contribution of articles, commentary, news, and other new insights from individuals voluntarily. The website is at the moment mainly in Finnish language but materials in all other languages are accepted insofar as fonts can be for that language.

All journalists and people interested in promoting multiculturalism in Finland can contribute in the sustenance and maintenance of reilumedia.fi by contributing in one or the other either spreading information or sending in material. Its primary objective is help immigrants successfully integrate into the Finnish society and create an atmosphere of social harmony and tolerance and to minimise racial conflicts and discrimination. Therefore reilumedia.fi aims at building a broad coalition of ordinary people, organisations researchers and institutions to work towards its goal of improving the life situation of immigrants in Finland.

For the central purpose of a fair representation in the media reilumedia.fi has sought to broadly network with nearly all immigrant associations in Finland. Links to some of these organisations can be found in the website www.reilumedia.fi

History

In the autumn 2007 Finnish Freelance journalists proposed to the Union of Journalists in Finnish (SJL) that it address the plight of immigrant journalists in Finland. It was proposed to the Union that it initiate a separate project that would have as its goal the improvement of the labour situation of immigrant journalists in Finland who, apparently out of ethnic discrimination have difficulties securing employment commensurate with their professional training and skills.

The Board of Federation Finnish of Journalists agreed that in order to promote multi-culturalism the issue would be taken up and therefore set up a seven-person working group made of Finnish and immigrant journalists to look into the matter and give recommendations.

The point of departure for the working group was that the future of social cohesion in Finland lies in the ability of the growing number of immigrants to get well integrated into the Finnish society to in order forestall marginalisation, discrimination and racial intolerance symptoms of which are beginning to appear in neighbouring Sweden.

Instances from other European countries which have had a longer tradition of hosting immigrant populations have clearly indicated that the role of the media is important in contributing to integration by how they report the life situation of immigrants.

The problems of immigration and immigrants should by no means be hushed under the carpet but providing a balance reporting of immigrant issues would be essential in bridging the cultural gulf that usually underpins the racial tension and conflicts among immigrants and natives.

It is particularly important that immigrants who have acquired journalistic training should be given the space to practice their skills in the labour market which in itself would also go a long way to portray the situation of immigrants in a different and complementing light.

In spite of the enormous diversity of the Finnish media, there are hardly any immigrant journalists in either the electronic or print media working as professionals on a full-time basis.

After a year of deliberations the working group organised a seminar in September that was well participated by immigrant and Finnish media practitioners and representatives of the some of the big media houses in Finland.

A major success of the working group is that it has firmly placed the problem of immigrant journalists’ poor employment situation on the agenda. Both media employers and journalists have gained an insight of the plight of immigrant journalists and are prepared to do something about it.

The final report of the working group will be submitted to the Union of Journalists in Finland (UJF) in 2010 but in the meantime it has set up a website hosted by the UJF to monitor how the mainstream Finnish media handle immigrant issues as well as providing material sourced from experts and researchers on immigrants for the use of the Finnish media. The website is www.reilumedia.fi