September 2000

NATO treated uncritically in Kosovo articles

The Finnish press was surprisingly uncritical of NATO’s air strikes during the Kosovo conflict. According to researcher Tiina Seppälä, a previous view that the Finnish press was more critical towards NATO’s actions than the American press seems erroneous.

According to a report in the national daily, Helsingin Sanomat (7 September 2000), Seppälä found that of this newspaper’s editorials 76,5 per cent took a positive view of NATO’s military action. Seppälä was surprised that there was more criticism of the air strikes and military action in Kosovo in the columns of Washington Post.

“The Finnish press didn’t dare to criticise NATO’s actions and air strikes as strongly as the press in the United States. Washington Post published articles which were really critical and negative about NATO”, Seppälä says.

In a study for the University of Lapland, Seppälä compared Kosovo articles in Helsingin Sanomat, Washington Post and Lapin Kansa, published in the capital of Lapland, Rovaniemi.

According to Seppälä, one reason for critical American writing was the fact that the war in Kosovo was also a domestic issue in the United States. However, she couldn’t find a clear reason for the positive attitude in Finland towards NATO. Finnish press was much more critical during the Gulf War in 1991. Then the claims about a “clean war” were treated sceptically. Seppälä says that NATO and the media seem to have learned from this criticism. The war in Kosovo was consequently waged in a more moderate manner, she says.

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