<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><p>Political scandals have been observed to be increasingly common everywhere. In April 2008, the Finnish Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr. Ilkka Kanerva, was compelled to resign because of the sensation arising from the enormous number of suggestive text messages that he had sent to a young female erotic dancer. During the scandal, the media followed this episode intensively. The present article considers what kinds of qualities for political leadership the media called for during this scandal and how these qualities were justified. The paper is based partly on quantitative but mostly on qualitative content analyses of the four most read newspapers in Finland. The results show five categories, the qualities being professional competence, personal characteristics and behaviour, trustworthiness, maintenance of relations and communication skills. The results show that the requirements imposed by the media are high, but that evaluation of professional competence is still crucial. Further, the occurrence of a scandal seems to trigger discussions on trust in politicians.</p></abstract>

Political scandals have been observed to be increasingly common everywhere. In April 2008, the Finnish Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr. Ilkka Kanerva, was compelled to resign because of the sensation arising from the enormous number of suggestive text messages that he had sent to a young female erotic dancer. During the scandal, the media followed this episode intensively. The present article considers what kinds of qualities for political leadership the media called for during this scandal and how these qualities were justified. The paper is based partly on quantitative but mostly on qualitative content analyses of the four most read newspapers in Finland. The results show five categories, the qualities being professional competence, personal characteristics and behaviour, trustworthiness, maintenance of relations and communication skills. The results show that the requirements imposed by the media are high, but that evaluation of professional competence is still crucial. Further, the occurrence of a scandal seems to trigger discussions on trust in politicians.

Political Scandal Tests Trust in Politicians

Nordicom Review

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.

The Case of the Finnish Minister Who Resigned Because of His Text Messages

Political scandals have been observed to be increasingly common everywhere. In April 2008, the Finnish Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr. Ilkka Kanerva, was...

Political Scandal Tests Trust in Politicians

Published Online: Dec 18, 2014

Page range: 3 - 16

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/nor-2014-0011

Keywords
politicians, individualization, journalism, newspapers, scandal, trust

© 2014 Pekka Isotalus and Merja Almonkari

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.

Political Scandal Tests Trust in Politicians

Published Online: Dec 18, 2014

Page range: 3 - 16

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/nor-2014-0011

Keywordspoliticians, individualization, journalism, newspapers, scandal, trust

© 2014 Pekka Isotalus and Merja Almonkari

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.

Keywords
politicians, individualization, journalism, newspapers, scandal, trust