According to the representatives of the journalists’ organizations, the harassment of the small local media is part of a wider Russian disinformation campaign that sends a message to both the Western and the Russian public.
The editor-in-chief of the small Arjeplognytt news site published in Lapland, Sweden Marianne Hofmann received an email at the end of August, which he first thought was spam.
He thought about destroying the message, but realized that it was meant for him and the magazine he published. The message was sent by Roskomnadzor, Russia’s state media monitoring body.
The message stated that it was published in the magazine in January 2019 story in Russian (you will switch to another service) broke the law and should be removed. If the article is not removed within 24 hours, access to the site will be blocked.
The story in question dealt with a Sámi man belonging to the sexual minority. He had accepted his sexual identity and dared to talk about it only after drifting into bad mental health problems, during which he had also attempted suicide. In the message of the Russian authorities, the story should be removed, because it deals with suicide, which violates Russian law.
Originally, the Swedish-language article was published in Russian in addition to Arjeplognytti in the Barents Observer magazine as part of an international article exchange. Already at that time, the Barents Observer had received a similar message to Marianne Hofman this month, and eventually access to the Barents Observer was blocked.
A rare case, but part of general influence efforts
International affairs expert of the Union of Journalists Salla Nazarenko does not know that similar deletion requests have been sent at least widely. However, he is not particularly surprised by Roskomnadzor’s demands on Arjeplognytti.
– Russia’s different types of control and censorship take different forms and apparently extend beyond the country today as well, says Nazarenko.
– This is funny, because of course no Nordic media censors itself because Roskomnadzor insists that such things should not be read on the internet, he continues.
According to Nazarenko, Russia is trying to send a message to both Western and Russian audiences with such absurd removal demands that it follows and monitors Western media.
The news that Arjeplognytti demanded to be removed has nothing to do with Russia or the ongoing Russian war of aggression in Ukraine.
Still, Nazarenko sees the demands directed at Arjeplognytti as part of Russia’s ongoing disinformation campaign, which has accelerated after Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 and even more this year after Russia launched a war of aggression in Ukraine.
The case of the small magazine is connected to the same continuum as the fact that in Russia, access to the websites of , Helsingin Sanomat and Ilta-Sanom, among others, has been blocked, it has been difficult for Western journalists to obtain visas, and several Finnish journalists have been barked at by name.
In the video below, Nazarenko comments on why it is important for Russia to try to intervene in the activities of the Western media, even if it does not succeed.
Chairman of the Barents Press International journalist network operating in Finland, Sweden, Norway and Russia, editor of Timo Sipola says that both homosexuality and indigenous peoples are difficult subjects for Russia.
By interfering with the news about them, Russia wants to show internationally and to Russians that it does not tolerate the values and actions of the West.
– The message is a sign that such matters must not be discussed in Russian. They are not interested in what is written in Finnish or Swedish.
Sipola believes that Russia would hardly ever have ended up attacking Arjeplognytti, if the paper had not allowed its story to be published in the Barents Observer, where access was also blocked because of the same story. An online magazine that follows the affairs of the northern region, published in English and Russian, has reported news from the Russian region independently, i.e. in a way that has not pleased the Russian administration.
– Of course, at the time, there were countless reasons behind blocking access, but this thing was what was used.
“There is no sense of proportionality or sense in Russia’s surveillance”
Arjeplognytt is a very small media. Only 2,700 people live in the municipality of Arjeplog. According to Sipola, the fact that Russia intervenes in the contents of such a small media clearly shows how a large organization controls the news in Russia.
– It says that there is no sense of proportionality or sense in Russia’s supervision, the bureaucracy is detached from all reality.
The journalist organization Barents Press International was founded in 1995 to promote freedom of speech in the northern regions. Sipola, who has been involved in the activity since the beginning, says that since then freedom of speech in Russia has gone steadily for the worse, and the start of the war in Ukraine last February was a clear turn for the worse.
Russian journalists are still involved in the cooperation of the journalists’ organization, but many of them fear that the state will react to cooperation with Western journalists.
Arjeplognytti editor-in-chief Marianne Hofman is also a member of the board of Barents Press International. Sipola thinks that it is probably a coincidence that Russia is harassing a journalist who is involved in an international journalists’ organization.
Attempts to influence are mostly followed by a backlash
What did Marianne Hofman do after receiving the message from the Russian authorities?
He didn’t remove the story from his magazine.
– First I got angry. They have nothing to do with my article or my magazine – I myself decide what to publish or not to publish, says Hofman.
– Then I started thinking about the state of press freedom in Russia and the fact that now Russia is trying to attack another country’s media. I became even angrier, Hofman describes in an email interview.
Now he says he feels some sort of sense of power and triumph.
This is exactly how Nordic journalists work: they don’t let influence companies influence them, but defend freedom of speech only more fiercely, say Timo Sipola of Barents Press International and Salla Nazarenko of the Association of Journalists.
– Attempts to influence always make hairs stand on end. The same is true in Finland: if someone tries to influence the journalist, it usually does not have the desired effect. It can be difficult to grasp it in Russia, Sipola thinks.
Nazarenko says that due to pressure attempts, journalists in Finland currently feel that reporting on issues related to Russia is even more important.
For her, Marianne Hofman’s actions in presenting the matter and telling the matter publicly are straightforward actions.
– Someone once said that if no one gets angry with a journalist, then he is a bad journalist. Dictatorship can sometimes hurt a journalist, and then it just happens that way.