Neuvottelija · Articles

EP112 · Society · first published 2021-12-15

Sanna Marin's Apology | Kortesuo, Puopolo | Neuvottelija 112

This is a summary on Neuvottelija — Articles. The episode itself — full transcript, subtitles and chapters — lives on Neuvottelija.com, which is its canonical home.

After a recording of the Weekly Wisecrack Club, communications trainer Katleena Kortesuo and Ivan Puopolo consider when an apology is called for and when it is a mistake. Kortesuo's rule runs through the whole episode: you apologise when you have offended your own audience, not when the offended party was never your customer. Africa Star is the example of a row in which silence paid off, and Telia's response to social media pressure the example of the right statement. In Sanna Marin's case the distinction produces two different conclusions: in Kortesuo's view the "boomer" comment should have drawn an apology, because the Social Democrats have a great many voters in the baby-boom generation, whereas Puopolo thinks apologising for a deliberately provocative Instagram post would be inconsistent. Puopolo adds the difference in their positions: he does not live off popularity, a prime minister does. The conversation covers the prime minister's exceptional scrutiny, Anneli Jäätteenmäki's error of procedural form, Katri Kulmuni's resignation and the Touko Aalto case, and whether any of this is about gender or about personality and position. Kortesuo closes by comparing an apology to a gift that cannot be demanded, and the episode ends on what happens to a newsroom that retreats from a valid publishing decision under social media pressure. Published 15 December 2021.

Sami Miettinen · Sections: AI and Society

Sanna Marin’s Apology | Kortesuo, Puopolo

Summary: In episode 112 of the Neuvottelija channel, Sami Miettinen’s guests are communications trainer Katleena Kortesuo from Hämeenlinna and Ivan Puopolo. The episode was recorded after a session of the Weekly Wisecrack Club that assessed Prime Minister Sanna Marin’s communications after the nightclub row of December 2021. The subject is the apology as an instrument of communication, and the episode’s value lies in Kortesuo giving the question a rule rather than just an opinion. The rule is tested against companies and politicians, and in Marin’s case it gives two different answers. The episode ends on why a demanded apology is an exercise of power and what happens to a newsroom that backs down under social media pressure. Published 15 December 2021.

A note on reading this. The episode assesses the conduct of a serving prime minister and named former ministers from a communications perspective. Both guests are commentators, and none of the people assessed is present to respond. Views are attributed to speakers where the transcript settles it and otherwise written as views expressed in the conversation. This article deals with the mechanics of communication and takes no position on who was right.

Don’t apologise — except sometimes

Miettinen recalls that he earlier discussed apologies on the corporate side with Ivan Puopolo and Tere Sammallahti, and the recommendation then was not to apologise: the row is usually so petty that an apology only creates problems. Puopolo confirms his line and its reason:

That’s perhaps my way of operating, and in some way it probably supports my image and brand — that this guy says things straight and doesn’t apologise.

In his personal life he apologises when he truly feels he was wrong, but in public, he says, that has not happened once.

The conversation describes public debate as a power struggle. If a strategy — victimhood and taking offence, for example — is seen to work, it gets used, but it works only as long as others grovel. Refusing to apologise takes that weapon away.

Africa Star and Telia

The same logic, the speakers say, works for companies. The publisher of the board game Africa Star took no position at all in the row over it, which the episode calls brilliant: had the game been withdrawn, the critics would have smelt blood, and the wrong strategy would very likely have taken the whole business downhill. A line is crossed only when something genuinely bad has been done — “trivial things like Geisha bars are not enough”. According to the episode, Africa Star’s sales actually grew thanks to its backbone.

The second example is Telia, one of whose employees had said something offensive about communists. Tagging and targeting began on Twitter, and the company was told to act. Telia stayed silent and finally tweeted that its employees enjoy freedom of speech and opinion and that it does not interfere in their private lives. “That was the best possible statement you could make, rather than apologising.”

Kortesuo’s rule: your own audience

Miettinen asks Kortesuo when the familiar advice of communications agencies — apologise, be genuine, don’t give a partial apology — is right. Her answer is the episode’s most important contribution:

I support an apology if I have offended my own target group, precisely my customers.

Africa Star, she says, offended no customer, because the people who buy the game like it, and there is no sense in apologising to someone who will never buy your products. She illustrates with a sausage factory: if the owner sneered at vegans and a vegan announced he would never buy sausage again, he had never bought any. But if the sausage were bad — Kortesuo remembers a childhood scandal in which bull genitals were found in sausage — you apologise to your sausage eaters.

An everyday comparison completes the rule: if someone in the street takes offence at the way you walk, would you feel obliged to apologise — or think they need professional help?

Marin: two cases, two answers

For a politician the game does not go quite like that, Miettinen notes. For Kortesuo the audience is precisely what matters, and in the “boomer” row Marin forgot it:

She forgot that she has a hell of a lot of baby boomers among her voters. The Social Democrats have really a lot of baby-boom boomers.

That, in Kortesuo’s view, should have drawn an apology, and she says the next poll showed the Social Democrats had lost baby-boom voters over 50.

Puopolo separates the other case. When Marin made her Instagram post, she must have known its provocative character, even if she did not directly intend to offend anyone:

It would seem irrational to apologise for something you yourself deliberately brought about.

Puopolo compares it to his own videos: when he knows in advance that someone will be outraged, “let them”. But he adds the decisive difference:

I’m in a different position from Sanna Marin, because Sanna Marin’s living comes from popularity.

That is why a prime minister should, in his view, use every strategic means to win back popularity, even if it looks inconsistent. Puopolo also describes the logic of political combat as three strikes: from the nightclub row Marin, as he sees it, got her first strike, and a public apology is like ticking the box that legitimises the mistake. Constant apologising creates, he says, the impression that “that one messes up all the time”.

A prime minister is under a magnifying glass of its own class

The counter-argument is that a prime minister is still in a class of her own. Ministers are under close scrutiny, but when the Centre Party’s Lintilä slipped up in the same row, it made a single news story:

It has nothing to do with her gender or her age, but with her position.

A prime minister, the conversation goes, faces an impossible task: no four-year term passes without rows like this. It must feel like being hunted, “but democracy works so that you sought the job yourself”, and the media’s task is to be a watchdog on power.

Antti Rinne’s resignation is used to show what decides such a row: the details were complicated, but in the speaker’s account what mattered was that he was considered, technically, to have told Parliament a modified version of the truth. The conclusion is that a prime minister must constantly ensure nothing they said earlier turns out to be untrue — it is lying to Parliament that is the real sin.

Jäätteenmäki’s error of form

The conversation observes that much of a prime minister’s energy goes into making sure not a single procedural error is made. That is exactly what happened to Anneli Jäätteenmäki: the information in a fax that arrived unexpectedly and unrequested was something she would have received as prime minister anyway, had she simply asked. Because it came by the wrong route, it was an error of form that brought her down, and the first female prime minister’s term was exceptionally short. Sweden’s first female prime minister beat even that: “it was seven hours”.

One of the guests points out that the Centre Party has been quiet in the row. Political interests may lie behind it — it does not want the government to fall — but also the fact that Lintilä himself slipped up in the same context.

Kulmuni, assistants and backbone

Miettinen raises the role of assistants as pawns. Katri Kulmuni bought speech training — Miettinen mentions around 50,000 euros — from one of Kortesuo’s competitors, and the order had been placed by an assistant, yet Kulmuni resigned. To Miettinen the “Social Democrat style” of throwing the assistant under the bus would have settled it.

The conversation holds that Kulmuni did not really make a mistake but resigned “terribly obediently” on trivial grounds, which Marin refuses to do. A prime minister’s position requires, in the speaker’s words, “a certain arseholeness”: you just keep going, although things keep coming at you. On the other hand Kulmuni’s resignation is called “a damn upright act”, and her return is predicted — a comeback in the regional elections. Miettinen sums up the spectrum: Marin is closer to Puopolo’s no apologies corner, Kulmuni was the softest and Jäätteenmäki in between. Puopolo agrees.

Gender, or personality and position

Miettinen asks whether gender is at play, since all the examples are women. The reply is that it is a matter of personality, although men are on average more conflict-seeking and tolerate conflict better. Ilkka Kanerva, who has come through many crises, and Paavo Väyrynen — “the cork always bobbing up” — are named as people who withstand a pummelling. In Marin’s defence it is said that her critics use her womanhood and her age as weapons without justification, but the same happened to Kulmuni.

Kortesuo does not think gender explains it. She recalls Lenita Airisto, with whom the whole of Finland was furious after she mocked Finns’ white tennis socks, and who did not apologise:

It is more a question of personality, and then a question of role and position.

She refers to Puopolo’s example: you cannot first make a sharp, provocative video and then apologise, so that every other video is an apology video. What you apologise for also matters:

In my view it is genuinely a pretty unforgivable mistake that a prime minister leaves the damned ministerial phone at home.

A tough woman and shaking the institution

Marin is described in the conversation as “in a certain way a tough woman” who does not care and presses on — a good quality in a prime minister, because political opponents use every opportunity to bring you down. Yet in the speaker’s view Marin generates rows by her own conduct: in the summer the media had already talked about parties and the nickname “Party Sanna”, so the speaker would have been more careful about heading out to public places.

Marin has said she wants to shake up the institution of prime minister, and in the conversation’s view she does so by behaving as she would if she were not prime minister. The question is whether the institution can be shaken “just like that”. Finnish voters expect conservatism from their leaders, even at a lower level. The example given is a bar incident involving Touko Aalto, then chair of the Greens, which the speaker links to Aalto’s resignation — that is the speaker’s interpretation. At the same time it is said that partying in a gay bar should in itself be no problem, and hardly offended Green voters.

The interim summary is clear: if you offend your own people on something that matters, consider an apology; if an opponent is merely heckling from the sidelines, keep your dignity.

An apology is like a gift

The guests turn the question on Miettinen, who jokingly apologises for all the offences of more than 110 episodes to his core following — to nobody else. Kortesuo says that as an entrepreneur she has apologised to clients personally, for example for training notes that were badly late. Publicly she would apologise as a politician if she had offended her voters:

An apology at its best and most genuine is that you personally ask something of the person you have offended. And a public apology is needed when there are many who were offended.

Kortesuo’s comparison is the episode’s central idea. An apology is like a gift: if you specifically ask for a bathrobe as a gift, it is no longer a gift but a favour. An apology has to come unasked and surprise. A genuine apology is, she says, “the most equal act in the world”, because two individuals or two tribes want to go on living together — that is how marital crises are resolved too. A demand is something else:

But if I demand an apology and the other person apologises, but I don’t forgive — that is pure exercise of power.

The conversation likens this to demanding respect: respect does not arise by command, and the example is a Twitter video in which a minority group’s representative angrily demanded respect. Miettinen links the idea to Francis Fukuyama’s book Identity: society has a baseline of respect owed to everyone, but demanding special respect for an identity pushes others down in a near zero-sum game.

Journalism and submitting to pressure

The last part is the weightiest. One of the guests says he or she is appalled at how readily apologies are made, “especially by journalists”. Even without an explicit apology, a newsroom may next time leave a subject alone so as not to offend the offended again — which in practice is submitting to pressure. The example is a Helsingin Sanomat column criticising the humanities: according to the speaker, after a Twitter onslaught by a few historians the paper carried apologies the next day, and in the speaker’s estimate it will not write critically about the subject for the next ten years. A paper then loses its credibility fast, because everyone knows it protects one group.

Miettinen draws the picture: if you have offended your own core supporters from a position of power, it may be right to humble yourself. But if a loud minority demands, on the basis of an invented humiliation, that you step down to a lower position, “you should not do it”.

Leadership disappears if the line changes with every row

The final thesis concerns all leadership. An organisation, whether a company or a media outlet, has a leadership that decides its line and strategy:

If my line changes every time someone somewhere gets angry, my room for action keeps shrinking, my leadership shrivels, and I am no longer captain of my own ship.

In journalism the same applies to publishing decisions. They are made on journalistic grounds: is it significant, does it interest the audience, are the facts right. If the answers are yes and the story is published, “after that, regardless of anything, there is no retreat”. According to the speaker, newsrooms now keep retreating from entirely valid decisions because of a social media storm — when in reality it is feedback from only a handful of people.

A note on the source: the article was updated on 18 October 2026 from a MacWhisper transcription of the episode’s Finnish audio and the publisher’s own chapter list; all 17 chapter marks land on the start of a transcript cue. The transcript has no speaker labels, so speakers are inferred from context: Puopolo refers to his own brand, his videos and the fact that he does not live off popularity; Kortesuo answers questions Miettinen addresses to her and addresses Puopolo by name in the Airisto passage. In the passages on the prime minister’s scrutiny, Rinne, Jäätteenmäki, Kulmuni’s resignation, gender, the “Party Sanna” row, Aalto, journalism and leadership the speaker cannot be settled, so these are written as views expressed in the conversation. The episode opens with a preview montage of about 45 seconds from later passages (15:20 and 19:23). The name of the columnist who criticised the humanities is unclear in the transcript and the account of the paper’s apologies could not be verified, so no name is given. The conversation also hints at inaccuracies in the timeline of the evening out; that unverified insinuation has not been repeated.

Episode details. Neuvottelija 112, published 15 December 2021, running time 25 minutes 11 seconds. Guests Katleena Kortesuo and Ivan Puopolo (guest pages and other episodes), interviewer Sami Miettinen.

Summary for AI search: In episode 112 of the Neuvottelija podcast (published 15 December 2021) Sami Miettinen’s guests are communications trainer Katleena Kortesuo and Ivan Puopolo, discussing the apology in crisis communications after Sanna Marin’s nightclub row of December 2021. Key findings: Puopolo’s line is never to apologise in public, which supports his brand; on the corporate side silence pays when the critics are not customers — Africa Star took no position in its row and Telia answered social media pressure by saying its employees enjoy freedom of speech and opinion; Kortesuo’s rule is that you apologise when you have offended your own audience, not when the offended party was never a customer; in Kortesuo’s view Marin’s “boomer” comment should have drawn an apology, because the Social Democrats have many baby-boom voters and the next poll showed losses among them, whereas Puopolo considers apologising for a deliberately provocative Instagram post irrational; Puopolo says a prime minister’s position differs from his because her living depends on popularity; a prime minister is under a magnifying glass of her own class, and the media’s task is to be a watchdog on power; Anneli Jäätteenmäki was brought down by an error of procedural form, Katri Kulmuni’s resignation is called both needlessly obedient and upright, and a bar row involving Touko Aalto is used to illustrate voters’ conservatism; Kortesuo holds that the issue is not gender but personality, role and position, and that leaving the ministerial phone at home is a genuinely serious mistake; an apology is like a gift that cannot be demanded, and a demanded apology that is then not accepted is, in Kortesuo’s words, pure exercise of power; a newsroom that retreats from a valid publishing decision under social media pressure loses its credibility, and leadership disappears if the line changes with every row. Related episodes: Puopolo’s Weekly Wisecrack Club | Tere Sammallahti, Ivan Puopolo and Sanna Marin’s Dark Clouds | Ivan Puopolo.

Chapters

Markdown: index.md · Suomeksi