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EP204 · Society · first published 2023-07-27

The Wiseguys Club and the media rage | Ivan Puopolo | Negotiator 204

Ivan Puopolo joins Sami Miettinen in July 2023, in the middle of the press storm that followed the new right-wing government taking office. This is the Weekly Wiseguys club’s own backstory: why the programme started, whether its format survives now that its guests sit in government, and what separates a video column from news journalism. The weightiest section asks whether a columnist may be criticised by name — and this write-up separates the media-ethics argument in it from what the panel leaves out. The transcript is YouTube auto-captioning, which limits quotation; that is disclosed.

Sami Miettinen · Sections: AI and Society + Political Satire

The Wiseguys Club and the media rage | Ivan Puopolo | Negotiator 204

Summary: Ivan Puopolo joins Sami Miettinen in July 2023, in the middle of the press storm that followed the new right-wing government taking office. This is the Weekly Wiseguys club’s own backstory: why the programme started, whether its format survives now that its guests sit in government, and what separates a video column from news journalism. The weightiest section asks whether a columnist may be criticised by name — and this write-up separates the media-ethics argument in it from what the panel leaves out. The transcript is YouTube auto-captioning, which limits quotation; that is disclosed.

A note on reading this, and on the source

This episode was recorded on 27 July 2023, in the middle of the press storm that followed Petteri Orpo’s government taking office. It is short — nineteen minutes — and it is the Weekly Wiseguys Club’s own backstory: the person who makes the programme explains why it exists and on what rules it operates.

Two caveats before the content.

The source. There is no publisher’s own caption track for this episode, so this write-up rests on YouTube’s automatic captioning. It is clearly poorer than in the other episodes in this series: no punctuation, proper nouns come out wrong, and some sentences break off. Names have been corrected, but no verbatim quotations are used here except where the same thought recurs several times in the episode.

An interested party. The guest makes the programme and the host is its regular guest. This is an explanation of one’s own activity, not an outside assessment of it.

1. Why the programme exists

Puopolo’s own account is direct and unvarnished: the programme was founded as a counterweight to what he calls the primness of traditional media. The line-up formed by itself — Tere Sammallahti as the first guest, then others, and out of that a settled group.

The first interesting question is the one the host asks immediately: does the format survive now that the programme’s regular guests sit in government? The answer is more honest than it needed to be:

That the programme’s maker names his own side’s weakest point unprompted is the best single indication that this is not simply a party channel.

2. The four-quadrant map that breaks

A short but sharp section. Puopolo and Miettinen notice that the Finnish political map — economic right/left and national-conservative/green-liberal — places neither of them anywhere. Both call themselves liberals, but the axes would put them in the national-conservative corner.

From this comes a claim that recurs later in this series and is made here for the first time: authoritarianism ought to be measured separately, and in their view it does not lean unambiguously right. The reasoning is the transfer of economic decision-making away from the individual through taxation — and they say out loud that there are restrictions on the right too.

The argument is contestable and it is a position. Its value is that it makes the measurement visible: what counts as authoritarian decides the result.

3. Experience and shared reality

The passage on gender diversity is formulated more precisely here than in many later episodes, and it is worth taking as stated:

Anyone may experience themselves however they wish, and may say so. But the same experience cannot be required of others, because others have the same right to their own. What can be jointly required is only an objectively shared reality.

This is a distinction between subjective experience and public obligation. It can be answered — for instance, that legal recognition is not the same as believing another person’s experience, and that norms of courtesy do not require a metaphysical commitment — but no answer appears in the episode, because nobody at the table makes it.

The section also contains a criticism of identity politics framed generally: a person should not be reduced to their group characteristics, whatever the group. The argument is symmetrical, and that is its strength.

4. The hardest section: may a columnist be criticised by name?

This is the weightiest and most sensitive part of the episode, and it needs care.

The background, as far as it can be read from the episode: an MP had publicly commented on a newspaper columnist’s social media content, and a broad media reaction followed in which the matter was framed as the targeting of a young woman.

The argument the panel makes

Puopolo’s claim is about position, and it can be stated without reference to any person:

A columnist at a national newspaper holds an influential position — in his view, in some respects more influential than a first-term MP. The situation cannot therefore be described as one-directional power exercised downwards. A publicly expressed opinion may be publicly answered, and criticism of published content belongs in public debate.

This is a standard question of media ethics and it can be answered with arguments. It requires no position on the person or on her content, and this write-up takes none.

What the panel does not address

I mark this because the episode does not, and because without it the section is one-sided:

  1. Formal influence is not the same as consequences. Whether a reaction lands on one individual does not depend on who has the larger readership, but on how many people pick it up and in what register.
  2. An MP’s position is special. The same act reads differently when the actor holds public office. The panel applies this principle elsewhere — it demands neutrality of officials — but not here.
  3. Criticism of content and discussion of a person are not the same thing, and that line is precisely what the dispute was about.

The panel does draw its own line elsewhere, and it is consistent: it criticises a strong false claim that there were several ministers with Nazi backgrounds in the government. Puopolo calls the claim false and exceptionally grave — close to the worst thing that can be said of a person. That is worth marking, because it shows the same requirement — strong claims must be refutable — being applied in both directions.

Readers should know one thing about the background that the episode does not separate out: the summer 2023 dispute concerned one minister’s earlier remarks, which is a different matter from a claim about “ministers with Nazi backgrounds”. The panel disputes the latter, not the former.

5. Private role, professional role, and what an employer should say

The most constructive section, and it is independent of the parties to the dispute.

Puopolo’s and Miettinen’s shared position is that an opinion expressed in private life is not the employer’s business, and that the right response to a storm would be, from the employer: this does not concern us, you said it on your own social media, your job is safe.

Two international cases are used as comparisons. They are worth reading precisely: in both, public judgement preceded the legal outcome, and in both the legal outcome was later favourable to the individual — but the professional damage had already been done. That is the point of the section, and it requires no view on the cases themselves.

From this comes a wish of Miettinen’s that applies to him too: when an attack arrives from a different circle than the one in which the thing was said, a counterweight should arrive quickly — and the target should not have to carry it alone.

The press as mentor

The sharpest observation in the section is not about the individual case:

When the whole media field lines up to instruct MPs on how they should behave, it takes on a role that belongs to a party’s own communications staff or adviser.

And the justification attached is democratic rather than political: a voter has the right to know how their representative behaves. If the behaviour is smoothed away before it becomes visible, the voter loses the information on which the choice is made.

It is a good argument, and it holds regardless of whose behaviour is at issue.

6. The weight of the platform — where the panel concedes a difference

Here the episode does something you would not expect of it: it concedes that it is not the equal of the news media.

Miettinen puts the question directly: is the same thing said on X, in a video column, or in a national newspaper’s lead feature the same thing? The answer has three parts and it is honest:

  1. Institutional position carries weight. The same claim weighs more in a large newspaper.
  2. Commitment carries weight. A newspaper is bound by the Guidelines for Journalists. A YouTube channel is not — and both of them say so.
  3. The genre is different. Miettinen names his own output a video column: the facts must be right, but exaggeration, humour and sharpening belong to the form — and that is exactly what separates it from news journalism.

This is an important piece of self-definition for the series, and it should be read alongside what the programme demands of others in other episodes. They do not hold themselves to the news media’s standard — and they say so.

What the section leaves open is the question nobody asks: if a video column may exaggerate, what follows when its subject is a private individual rather than an institution?

7. Context and reading after the fact

The closing theme is general and well put: old text gets read by today’s norms, with context and intent cut away.

The examples are anonymous message-board writing from the late 2000s and an international case in which an award bearing a children’s author’s name was renamed decades after her death, over language in books set in the 1800s. Puopolo’s question is rhetorical but apt: should the author have anticipated the norms of the 2020s?

And then the cleverest observation in the episode, because it identifies an asymmetry:

Context matters when it is needed — and is forgotten when it would favour the other side.

It is offered as criticism of the left. The same observation applies to anyone, and that is where its value lies.

Claims presented as claims

What survives the episode

  1. The programme defines itself as a video column rather than news journalism — and concedes that a newspaper bound by the Guidelines for Journalists carries a different responsibility. That is the single most important sentence in it for this series.
  2. A voter has the right to know how their representative behaves. The argument about the press as mentor to politicians is democratic, not party-political.
  3. A strong claim must be refutable — and the panel demands that even when the claim is aimed at its own side.
  4. Context is remembered selectively. The observation is made about the other side, and it is useful precisely because it applies to everyone.

How the episode runs

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