ARE 4-DAYS A WEEK ON 6 WORKING HOURS ENOUGH FOR JOURNALISTS TO CHECK THE FACTS?

A party event of the Finnish Social Democratic Party was held in Turku, Finland, in August 2019. In this city in the southwest of the country, the party celebrated its 120th anniversary of its foundation.

The whole event was held in a relaxed and festive atmosphere with many smiling faces, congratulations on all sides and wishes for success in the next elections. Following a speech by then Prime Minister Anti Rine, a panel discussion was attended by several ministers from the Finnish government, including then Transport Minister Sana Marin. The panel was held in a relaxed atmosphere dominated by the exchange of good wishes, without serious talk about future party and government policies. It is in this context that Sana Marin, discussed his idea of ​​a four-day work week or a six-hour workday.

After the event, Marin posted this idea on Twitter on August 19, 2019 and shared it with his Twitter followers. She adds that her party’s goal is to reduce working hours, but there is no mention of an official government program or plan. After several comments and reactions in the media during August 2019 this topic subsided and was quickly replaced by other current events.

Four months later this story appears on the Austrian news site, Kontrast. In the story the journalist writes as Marin on that day, December 16, has said:

“A 4-day week and a 6-hour workday, why wouldn’t this be our next step? Is it really an eight hour final solution? I think people deserve to spend more time with their family, loved ones, in their hobbies and other aspects of their lives – like culture. That could be the next step in our working life. “The quote, compared to information in the Finnish media, is correct, but the date of the statement has not been consistently transmitted.

The next announcement of this news was reported on January the 2nd, 2020 in the Belgian newspaper New Europe entitled “The Finnish Prime Minister Calls for a 4-Day Work Week and 6 Hours of Work in the Country”. From these mediums, the news was broadcast by the British press, and later by a number of other media outlets.

Following the Finnish government’s denial of this news, most of these media outlets corrected their reports and changed the details of the entire news and its chronology.

But all this did not stop Macedonian portals and news sites from expanding this story to the end, as their counterparts started off well. Among the many different titles, the following can be read: Paradise on Earth: Six hours of work only four days a week, Finland introduces a 4 day work week, 6 hours a day, Finland will work four days six hours, and similar to them.

On the list of online media that transmitted this unverified news also found many members of the recently established Professional Online Media Register in North Macedonia, and only a small part of them, have transferred the disclaimer to the Finnish government.

What conclusions can be drawn from this case of spreading misinformation? Why have so many media outlets, both foreign and regional and domestic, with a significant reputation and large audience, not checked this information? The key question is why only a small number of media outlets have denied the news.

Unfortunately, for both the media and online readers, this news has shown at least three things:

(1) Fact-checking, truth-seeking and professional journalism are hard and very responsible work. It requires time, will, dedication, perseverance and faith in professional standards as the best way to gain and maintain public trust in both the journalist and the media. The process is painstaking and laborious, and does not produce instant results. Although there are no quick results in the medium and long term, it is probably the only way to maintain the readers’ trust, but also the confidence that the media is really interested in the truth and in the public interest.

2) Objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than arousing emotions and personal convictions through semi-information or misinformation.

3) The facts and the truth are often not attractive and “clickable”

Portals and news sites live from clicks, and “boring and unattractive truths” are not very useful to them. Many of these media outlets, which have qualified staff and sufficient resources to verify information as well as create quality content, simply seem to have decided to ignore the less attractive truth and the boring facts about this story.

The speed of information flow and the daily dynamics of hyper-production of news and information almost cannot tolerate truth, fact-checking and upholding professional standards. Is the race for manipulative clicks the only goal of the modern online media? Aside from the numbers and click metrics as if there is nothing else.

Such practices of instant pseudo-journalism have serious negative consequences not only for the media system but also for the societies themselves. Many journalists and the media are spreading a new “culture of disregard for truth and facts”. If the facts and the truthful information do not generate enough clicks and readability they are of no value to the media. But is it so? Is click the only measure of the importance and value of facts? Is the metric of clicks, likes, shares, comments the only valuable metric? These media mostly rely on a nervous and psychotic reader who is easily attracted to manipulative headlines who do not feel the need, knowledge or habits to critically check information. Are readers not interested, and do the facts or the media create such readers?

Solutions to existing misinformation problems are not easy, but repeating the same mistakes and wrong practices only speeds up eroding the little confidence left in the media. In spite of all analyzed reasons and methods for spreading misinformation, neglecting the truth and the facts seems to be the most dangerous and the worst-case scenario for all of us.

Sead Djigal,

January 2020.