24 May 2006
Written by Rainer
Santa-Claus lost his face
After Lordi won the Eurovision song contest they had a request for press of not publishing their real photos. Well not surpricingly -I worked in a restaurant where they usually came during and after work day and unfortunately heard many of their conversations (the one I recall best was when they wondered if Swedish use the letter Ö …)- a representative of Finnish yellow press, Seitsemän päivää, aka “Seiska” (i.e Seven days), published the pictures and had Lordis’ faces on the cover.
The Finnish public wasn’t that interested of their faces and Seiska’s forum was flooded with angry messages from people discusted of the magazines behaviour and disrespetfullness. Some of the people were even organizing a boycotting campagn for the magazine and for companies adverising in the magazine, resignation of the editor, etc… -hmm.. this reminds me of something from the december; danish pictures of Muhammed anyone? I’m just waiting for the Finnish Prime Minister to officially make a statement and apologize Lordi. The forum was soon sensored of these messages, but they weren’t able to get rid of all of them; the amount of messages even caused the site to give error 503s time to time.
People understand that this is a rumour magazine and a member of the yellow press but still the act of publishing the photos is something no one accepts. Specially when Putaansuu, aka Lordi, had made a desent request for the press and the public of keeping his face masked. Many have signed a public card of condolence in the internet to force Seiska to apologice Lordi for their action. The picture can’t be unpublished, but even though I’m all in favor of the rights of press and photographers I still thing this is inappropriate action. The band has always used their own names so any one could’ve, in theory, just called to 118 and asked the address of this person.
My post in a nutshell: Respect a humble request of a man. Even though the magazine had right to publish the picture they weren’t required to do so.
The magazines haven’t hit the stands yet so lets withdraw the edition.
I intentionally didn’t link to the pictures or to the Seiska’s site
categorised as » Current Affairs, Finland
ShortURL for linking: http://lime.rahina.info/?p=49
3 Comments currently posted.
The Corner Blog » Blog Archive » Another one bites the dust says:
Rainer says:
Just adding update this as a brief comment.
The boycott condolence has received already over 100 000 signatures and the amout just keeps groving.
The Seiska-magazine has removed all contact details and pictures of their staff from their website. They had received threats of violence, etc which is a bit over kill – this is not an issue of life and death.
Jakob says:
I’d say the only thing interesting to the paper is: Did they sell more copies? If they did, then blame the Finnish people
[...] Apparently Seiska wasn’t the only one who published pictures of Lordi – in Finland I mean, “no-one expects any decency from those foreign magazines” (actual quote). This time the the publisher was a midsized morning newspaper Hämeen Sanomat. The Council for Mass Media in Finland had instructed media to use “good manners” and, apparently all but two, members of the media had a consensus of not publishing the images. The subscribers took this even more seriously than with the “trashpress” Seiska because this newspaper is was regarded of having high standards and following “good journalistic princibles”. The newspaper’s messageboard [in Finnish, sorry] was filled with angry subscribers. The “mob” was mostly angry of the fact that the author had based the article and the publication of the pictures on freedom of speech. I fail to see how the editor let this kind of content out. He has to justify the “freedom of speech card” very well in his editorial and the author should bring out her own point and justfication as well. The finnish public isn’t that blue eyed and forgiving when it comes to the abuse of freedom of speech. [...]