Helsingin Sanomat

Helsingin Sanomat  (Newspaper)
Type	file of unspecified type
Founded	1889
Author(s)

Helsingin Sanomat is a widely read Finnish newspaper, owned by Sanoma Corporation, Finland's largest media group. The newspaper was for many decades dominated by the Erkko family; the founder Eero Erkko; his son Eljas Erkko, and grandson Aatos Erkko.

The Secret Behind the Cliff

In December 2017, Helsingin Sanomat published The Secret Behind the Cliff, an expose by Tuomo Pietiläinen and Laura Halminen of a covert mass surveillance program in central Finland which had been run for years. This was nominally focused on Russian military forces on the Finnish border, but the newspaper argued could also be monitoring the Finnish population. Following the publication of this article, Finnish police raided Laura Halminen's house and seized computing equipment, claiming that because the case was a matter of "national security", no warrant was required.

Helsingin Sanomat and the CIA

Helsingin Sanomat editor-in-chief Eljas Erkko

The newspaper was for many decades dominated by the Erkko family; the founder Eero Erkko; his son Eljas Erkko, and grandson Aatos Erkko.

Jukka Kortti, a historian at the University of Helsinki, analyzed the relationship between Helsingin Sanomat, the Erkki family and and the CIA:

For several decades after World War 2, most Soviet and Eastern European news stories published in Helsingin Sanomat came from the West through such papers as Life and The Times, which were then translated for a Finnish audience. In addition, Helsingin Sanomat also purchased news stories from more questionable sources, such as the Information Research Department (IRD), which was a subsection of the British Foreign Office. The IRD cooperated with the British Secret Intelligence Service.

Helsingin Sanomat also used material from the London-based American news agency Forum World Feature (FWF), which was founded by the CIA. The CIA was surprised at how much profit they made from the FWF by selling news material to Western European newspapers, including Finnish papers. The evening paper Ilta-Sanomat, owned by Sanoma Oy, was a regular customer of FWF until 1975, when it was revealed that the 'news agency' was an American propaganda institution. Eljas Erkko's successor as the head of Helsingin Sanomat, his son Aatos Erkko, continued the daily's Western-minded policy, but he also wanted to maintain good relations with President Uhro Kekkonen and the Soviet Union. Ultimately, Helsingin Sanomat established an office in Moscow in 1975, the last major Finnish news outlet of the era to do so.

Sanoma also started publishing Reader' Digest (Valitut Palat in Finnish) in 1945. Finland was the third European country after Britain and Sweden to publish a national version of Reader’s Digest – the major promoter of the middle-class American white Anglo-Saxon Protestant lifestyle: individualism, market economy and the idea of liberal society.

Overall, Eljas Erkko played a central role in introducing American influences to Finland. During World War II, when Finland was a co-belligerent with Nazi Germany and Erkko was removed from state politics, he founded the Finnish-American Association. In the post-war years, Erkko was very active in Western European and American relations, including those concerning news media. For instance, he was at the inaugural meeting of the International Press Institute (IPI) at Columbia University in New York in 1950. In 1954, Eljas Erkko became chair of the IPI

The IPI and Reader's Digest had connections with intelligence agencies, if not outright operations directed by the CIA or USIS (United States Information Service). Eljas Erkko himself had a warm relationship with USIS public affairs officer Everett G. Chapman. Moreover, Erkko already had a connection with the predecessor of the CIA, the OSS (Office of Strategic Services). The OSS had made contact with Eljas Erkko through his brother, Eero O. Erkko, who lived in the US, making the former an important source of information for the CIA during the Cold War. For instance, the USIS offered photographs from the US for Helsingin Sanomat, free of charge. In addition, Erkko had close connections with the biggest American news agencies, the Associated Press (AP) and United Press (UP).

Journalists as spies

Finnish journalists also participated in Cold War propaganda and espionage activities. For instance, many Helsingin Sanomat journalists took part in the parties organised by the Western Foreign Press Club (WFPC) in Helsinki, assisted by the CIA, while the Soviets tried to recruit the journalists as agents, at least to write for the Soviet papers. Presumably, none of the Helsingin Sanomat journalists worked for the Soviets at the time, but at least one of them worked for CIA during the 1970s. This journalist participated in a large espionage project coordinated by the CIA on the reception of Western propaganda radio (Voice of America, Radio Free Europe, Deutche Welle and BBC). The journalist reported on critical attitudes among Soviet scientists as well as ordinary Soviet citizens throughout the Soviet Union.

 

Employees on Wikispooks

Employee	Job	Appointed	End	Description
Antti Blåfield	Editor	1998	2012
Aatos Erkko	Media executive	1970	1989	Also owner. Bilderberger
Aatos Erkko	Editor	1961	1970
Kaius Niemi	Editor in chief	2013		Attended 2022 Bilderberg.

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