Kai Mykkänen, Minister of Climate and the Environment (The National Coalition Party – EPP) claimed that Finland voted against the European nature restoration law because of its excessive costs: “According to the Commission’s impact assessment, the costs are the highest in the EU for Finland in relation to the size of its economy.” The claim…
“Euro membership is an economic detriment to Finland”, claims EU election candidate and member of Finnish parliament Kaisa Garedew from the Perussuomalaiset party (Finnish national conservatives). Although the matter can be viewed from multiple viewpoints, the claim, published by the party’s newspaper Suomen Uutiset on March 26, 2024, turns out to be mostly false. Euro…
News platform Brussels Signal published an article in April, titled ”Two thirds of Poles oppose adoption of the euro, poll shows”. Brussels Signal’s founder and publisher is Patrick Egan, who has connections to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz party. We began to question the claim because the platform’s political connections. However, we found in…
The claim “EU’s new environmental law bans bonfires in private property areas”, was stated on April 10 in an article by MV-lehti, a Finnish right-wing, fake news website, known from spreading misinformation. The claim turns out to be false. Celebratory bonfires are a prolonged tradition in Nordic countries, often lit during midsummer, Easter or Mayday…
YouTube favored far-right-wing videos in the run-up to the Finnish presidential election in 2024, claimed journalist Clothilde Goujard in Politico magazine on the 26th of March 2024. Goujard bases her claim on a well-known Finnish factchecker’s report. We checked the claim and found it uncheckable. According to experts, the data collecting period was not long…
The year 2022 has had a difficult start for Europe. In February Russia started a war against Ukraine. This has been challenging for Europe, and perhaps especially for Finland as it is Russia’s neighbor. As journalist students from Finland, we found ourselves wondering who are the Finnish experts talking about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in the media.…
In our media analysis, we compare news about Ukrainian war refugees to the news about the refugee crisis in 2015. All news were published by Finnish public media broadcasting company Yle. We wanted to see if there is a difference in how media writes about people fleeing from Ukraine and refugees in 2015. We found…
Normally Finland hasn’t been in the headlines of global media, since Finland is mostly known for being the happiest country in the world (according to The World Happiness Report) and having one of the best education systems in the world. Now Finland and our president has been put in the spotlight. During the Ukraine war,…
Finland’s defence capability became the focus of international media attention after Russia invaded Ukraine. Finland holds a very special geopolitical position in Europe because it has 1300 kilometres border with Russia. In particular, Finland’s position regarding the defense union NATO has become a question of interest. Finland’s military service system is universal, which means that…
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Grushko said: “Trade turnover with the European Union decreased in 2020, if you count the UK, by 21% compared to 2019.” The claim was published in the news outlet RT in 22.3.2021, and it seems to be true. Figure 1: RT article 22nd of March with claim RT is publicly…