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 XXIst 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 |