A fairy tale of citizen transparence

Afternoon everyone!

A world of whites and grays

Today it’s Sunday and once again I find myself sitting here, whiling away the blessedly slow hours of this lazy afternoon in the sole comforting company of a blank computer screen and my latest musical discovery, Laura Marling; a British-born miracle of a blondie whose voice – part hoarse lament, part ageless chant, the sight of gray clouds rolling over the waning sun at dusk, the smell in the air after a thunderstorm at a roadside inn – and intricate, storytelling lyrics have found a straight path to my heart and filled the silence of my sleepless nights and early mornings of late. That, and the rain that has persistently dogged Helsinki for the past week, cloaking the city in a world of whites and grays, fog and drizzle, sodden leaves and rough seas.

Pleasures of the Finnish life: Reading essays out in the sun!

I do hope the week treated y’all well, wherever it is that you’re reading me from. Mine was a frantic affair, running from assignment to assignment, rubbing reddened eyes after enduring hours of essay-reading, stifling yawns and wearily stretching legs while attending conferences and lectures, quoting authors, gathering references, printing, underlining, writing, typing, scrutinizing, phrasing, reading, reading, reading… Hell, these Finns do take seriously their academic stuff but I won’t be the one to complain, regardless of what could transpire from the previous words. I’m actually loving every bit of it; think me ludicrous, exaggerating or bordering sadomasochistic tendencies if you may, but it’s true!

"The priceless moment of attending what I believed a regular lesson and finding myself face to face with a Stanford researcher"

While the commodities made available to me as a visiting student are amazing – I’ll elaborate on that particular aspect when I manage to get running my story on Finnish education, stay tuned! -, what I find truly invaluable from my stay at the University of Helsinki are the opportunities, the unexpected pleasure of turning up at what I believed to be a regular, ordinary lesson on some dismal, overcast Thursday morning and surprising myself face to face with a Stanford-based media researcher. Those are the priceless moments that paint an eager smile on my face every morning when the alarm goes off painfully early in its dully melodic predicament; the moments that make shrugging the weariness off an easy, effortless affair that takes less than five minutes. Back in my days in Madrid, it often felt like I would have needed to be towed away from bed the same way a car parked at the wrong spot would.

Tuomo Pietiläinen, investigative reporter in Helsingin Sanomat
(Source: Lehtikuva/Heikki Saukkomaa, www.hbl.fi)

One such inspiring events took place but two days ago, through the words of guest lecturer Tuomo Pietiläinen. Keen-eyed, displaying the composed demeanor and brooding, slowly rolling discourse I so often encounter in Finnish speakers, this Helsinki-based reporter brought forth the testimony of a new reality that my Spain-accustomed mind first thought to be a utopia taken straight from some idealistic loony’s wild dreams: crowdsourcing. Before any of you thinks to go for a Google search, I’ll elaborate a bit on the concept and its implications for investigative journalism. I’m sure you have all stumbled upon it at some point or another: this fearless type, part journalist part self-made crime investigator, who finds no rest and knows no obstacles on his path to uncover the grim, secret truth behind the actions of someone, often a powerful and relentless politician or executive from some company who has something to hide. The outburst of the Watergate case brought the figure of the investigative reporter to the public’s attention and enveloped it in a mythical aura; all the subsequent films, novels and stories on the matter have but reinforced it.

"It is no easy job to track down that which doesn't want to be tracked, knows how not to be tracked"

Bernstein and Woodward, the reporters
who uncovered the Watergate scandal

However, the movies got something right – they’re bound to occasionally, more out of sheer coincidence than anything else -: (good) investigative reporters have a hell of a job. Their determination to get to the truth involves sleepless nights losing one’s eyesight peering over opaque bank statements, tracing the ever-elusive money jumping from country to country, struggling to stay awake for the whole of yet another night of surveillance from within a parked car. It is no easy job to track down that which doesn’t want to be tracked, knows how not to be tracked; if you don’t believe me, try and investigate the finances of a company without yielding to the combined pressure of its trained packs of lawyers and public relationships. An investigative reporter must fight that, and worse, with a budget a thousand times smaller than that of his target. He can’t hope for friends in his hunt but fellow sympathetic reporters and the news organization he works for, a news organization likely to drop out of the chase – or never to begin it at all – when it starts to pose a threat to its own interests.

"If given the chance, most citizens would love to lend a hand to the reporter in his quest for truth"

Fortunately, as proven by our lecturer’s experience, this XXI^st century of turmoil and havoc brought an ally for worldwide reporters, one unexpected but who had been there all the way from the beginning: the citizens. Citizens who suffer daily, more than anyone else, the effects of the widespread corruption amongst our politicians and bankers; citizens who, if given the chance, would love to lend a hand to the reporter in his quest for truth; citizens who, much unlike the reporter, carry with them the potential of ubiquity, the ability to pressure with information from countless points simultaneously. In essence, that is what crowdsourcing is about: involving the people in a process that should have never been barred to them to begin with.

Headquarters of the OP-Pohjola group, Helsinki
(Source: Helsingin Sanomat)

This fairy tale of transparence and citizen involvement takes us back to 2011, a year marking the fourteenth anniversary since the main Finnish banks vowed to abide by a strict ethic code after dubious practices had been uncovered by journalists. More than a decade afterward, a squad of investigative reporters from Helsingin Sanomat captained by Pietiläinen himself thought it interesting to verify whether the corporations, namely the group OP-Pohjola, had remained true to such solemn promises. To that end, they requested (and paid for) a bunch of documents from the Finnish authorities – chiefly, bank statements belonging to the wealthiest executives and chairmen of the country – and soon came to feel overwhelmed by the sheer weight of the information; it could take weeks, months, to even process such vast pile of data, let alone extract any conclusions out of it. This is when they chose to turn to people, in the reasoning that many citizens out there could skim over a bank statement as well as any journalist and were ready to hop on the investigating bandwagon if offered the chance.

"A reader found out that the bankers were using a network of ghost companies to avoid tax paying"

One of the scoops Pietiläinen published in HS:
"Bankers from OP-Pohjola group got millions in dividends"
(Source: Helsingin Sanomat)

The journalists devised a simple, yet cunning strategy to catch the readers’ attention: they first went through some of the data, found some incriminating evidence and published in their front page. Several thousand pair of eyes now firmly glued to the scoop, they then proceeded to offer the audience the chance to join in and participate in the investigation. To help them get started, the journalists made all the data available free of charge; hundreds of folders bearing the name of one banker or investor and containing all the data concerning that person’s financial movements. To report whatever shred of evidence they found in those files and folders, the journalists also provided a form to be filled in by the readers; a form created with the free technology delivered by Google Docs platform, an accessible and interactive channel for citizens to publish the data. As Pietiläinen himself admitted, ‘not a pretty form but it did its job nice and easy’. The laborious assistance of the public soon yielded some very juicy findings. A reader, eager to learn what his own asset management bank was up to behind the scenes, found out some of the bankers within OP-Pohjola Group kept mysterious holding companies with startlingly similar names. Digging deeper and deeper into the data, he came to realize the companies were nothing but a ghost devoid of any real activity, an empty facade behind which lay a complex, maze-like structure used by the brokers to have their money jump from company to company and end up appearing as ‘dividends’ instead of ‘income’; a simple stunt that allowed them to elude tax-paying – in Finland, dividends and bonuses are taxed lower than income.

The consequences of taking such a scoop to Helsingin Sanomat’s front page didn’t take long to show their ugly mug: the journalists soon had to contend with angry phone calls from brokers and executives not depicted in a very nice light by the piece of news. Eyes sparkling with amusement, Tuomo Pietiläinen described how one of the affected business men went as far as to solemnly claim, via phone conversation, how he had meant to divulge the irregularities all the way. This anecdote was met by general merriment in our class; it feels wonderful, almost therapeutic to one’s hopes, to hear about how at times – not manym admittedly – there are consequences for the powerful people when they meddle with that which doesn’t belong to them.

"This fairy tale would make no sense, could never exist anywhere but in a country such as Finland"

As Pietiläinen’s speech was drawing to an end, sitting there in helpless wonderment at the story, I couldn’t help but realize this fairy tale would never make any sense, could never exist anywhere but in a country such as Finland. The fact that the journalists were able to get their hands on trustworthy, solid data about the country’s finances from the government – if only for a fee -, the fact that the bankers were happy to provide information that could well mean their eventual demise, the fact that citizens didn’t hesitate to jump in the investigating process and devoted much of their time and effort into shedding some light into quite an obscure area… It all adds up and up. While this country is far from perfect, this fairy tale is actually a real story; an inspiring tale of the degree of transparence and accountability a nation can hope to reach when everyone, citizens included, involve themselves. Finns have many reasons to be proud of what they have achieved and this fairy tale is just one amongst them. To them I raise my glass. Kippis, and the very best of weeks to you all!

Gris

The sun sets over Helsinki, last day of September, 2012