6.1.2020

Which English newspaper copies which?

Today I ran into a strange phenomenon: multiple British newspapers were claiming that the Finnish government is "planning a four-day week". The story is bogus.

This is The Guardian:


A similar story is run by Daily Mail, Evening Standard, Metro, ITV and others. ITV even claims that Sweden would have adopted a six-hour working day earlier. That is not true either - the Swedish trial was extremely limited, and was stopped after finding out that it was economically unsustainable even in the small scale of one hospital's nurses where it was tried, although most of those who enjoyed shorter working days obviously liked the trial very much.

I suppose this is a stark reminder: do not trust very much the foreign reporting - even newspapers that are generally considered reputable, like the Guardian, may run completely bonkers stories if it fits their agenda. And you just won't know about it, because you rarely know the country in question.

In reality, Sanna Marin mentioned the idea of a four-day week back in August 2018, when she was just another government minister, not the prime minister. She presented it as a "vision", not a plan, and it certainly isn't a commitment by the government she currently leads. The government's program can be checked  on the government pages (in Finnish). Marin's government continues to use the same policy paper as the cabinet lead by Antti Rinne, who had to resign due to mismagement of the postal service.

But I am curious: is Guardian copying Daily Mail, or is Daily Mail copying the Guardian? Well, more likely, they both are trusting a single source that is not trustworthy, and they fail to do even basic check-ups of the viability of the story. Perhaps the story fits their preconceptions - these may be different preconceptions, but the outcome is still that all these papers publish a bogus story. And very many British seem to fall for it. Guardian readers seem particularly aggressive.

2 kommenttia:

  1. I might add that I am delighted that the only British paper that I subscribe, The Times, did not publish this bogus story.

    VastaaPoista
  2. News Now Finland has the background for how this incorrect article spread out to major newspapers all over Europe, particularly in Britain:
    https://newsnowfinland.fi/politics/how-finlands-fake-four-day-week-became-a-fact-in-europes-media

    VastaaPoista