Afghani Birth Control

According to this report from YLE (in Finnish,) the women of Afghanistan can now utilize family planning services. This includes advice, high quality information, birth control methods and training for local religious leaders. This helps improve attitudes and prevent unwanted pregnancies. Nothing wrong with this.

But, according to the report, Finland is the only outside funding country. This is what made me look for more background information. The big questions were why only one donor instead of multinational support, and why only Finland. The website of the organization in question, Marie Stopes International, provided me with a basic profile on Afghanistan and a release about the work in question.

The release, Making a Difference in Afghanistan provides confirmation for the numbers used in the YLE report and some extra information. Currently there are 15 clinics and 2 mobile units, with 52 community health workers in Afghanistan. For a nation with the highest maternal death rate in the world, this is a valuable service.

But then, as usual, we run in to problems. First of all, while less efficient, MSI offered valuable services already in 2003, not mentioned in the news. That's not the big problem however, which is that in the Afghanistan overview MSI reports they have 4 major donors: "Government of Finland; Direct Relief International; Jersey Overseas Aid Commission; Swedish International Development Agency (SIDA)."

This is a problem in that YLE reported Finland as the only funder, but MSI reports Finland is working together with MSI, mentioning nothing of exclusivity. It's frustrating that YLE has no source available, no link to a press release or any lead to follow up on besides the organization's name, which provides contradicting information.

I hope the point of the report wasn't as much comment on how great Finland is than to bring up the current situation in Afghanistan, as for the latter the inconsistency doesn't detract from the article. But if YLE simply wanted to write a "go us" story they could've been more honest going about it.

YLE Mongering H1N1 Panic

The line of reporting at YLE regarding the H1N1 here has been less than professional, and most of the news are meant to be scary. YLE isn't a company seeking advertising for profit and it should maintain a higher standard, but much like our yellow press (yesterday's headline was "People are dying in the queue" which wasn't even the case in the article, they just made the headline up) YLE's reporting has been getting more and more panic mongering and worthless.

The most recent article online is just a collection of scary stories from patients who have suffered H1N1. Just a bunch of short stories about symptoms, worse symptoms, even worse doctor visits and mental problems. This is not news, and it most certainly isn't the right way to talk about a disease which so far had failed to meet any prediction of infection rates or fatalities.

The problem lies in that the swine flu reporting has been getting gradually worse and now we are far, far from any real reporting without noticing any drastic changes in between.

If you read Finnish, take a look for yourself. The whole piece is meant to leave you feeling like there is a terrible disease looming with no help in sight. There's a wonderful short story of a pregnant woman who was prescribed Tamiflu and suffered from audible hallucinations and was isolated - it's just as scary as intended.

http://yle.fi/uutiset/kotimaa/2009/11/lukijat_kertovat_h1n1_nostaa_kovan_kuumeen_ja_tuntuu_lihaksissa_1165589.html?origin=rss

This Is Why You Do Not Want to Exaggerate

I'm just going to select a few choice bits from the most recent AP post about the Typhoon Lupit.

Cruel, erratic, baffling, frustrating, would ram, barreled on course, dangerous system.

Even though I've selected the words and taken them out of context they are a very descriptive selection. The whole article makes it seem the Typhoon could be a serious shock just after a huge one.

Would you like some reality instead?

Lupit is a tropical storm, downgraded from a typhoon. It's not going to slice trough Philippines like the article says, it's not barreling on course to anywhere since it's moving at 1 knot. It's sustained winds are 55 knots peaking at 70. That's still a 10 (of 12) on the Beaufort scale, but it wouldn't qualify as a hurricane.

Sure, there is now a storm headed for Philippines, but that's a serious swing and a miss for AP. Hrvoje Hranjski wrote it, but he should have checked his facts near publication too.

I kept wondering why Lupit didn't get any more attention in the news (while it still was a typhoon heading for Philippines,) and when someone finally wrote something we got this. Instead of say, reliable reporting.

Here is the article I'm talking about:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091023/ap_on_re_as/as_asia_storm

Here you can find the storm warning I used to check my facts:
http://www.usno.navy.mil/NOOC/nmfc-ph/RSS/jtwc/warnings/wp2209web.txt

Missing Quality

I feel like I'm picking on a retard every time I write about YLE. It seems their feed really doesn't allow you to look at all the news with a straight face. I understand the point of having a cute animal at the end of a news broadcast, but on the Internet and especially in the feed form I don't get it.

Specifically? I'm looking at a piece where they've opened an Elf Academy in Italy to support the Santa School in Rovaniemi. Everyone should stop reading the article right at the title, but since I already started I've now learned how the school is in Noventa di Piave near Venice and ...

I'm not going to go there. The article is utterly worthless. It is not funny, it is not informative, interesting or in any way valuable. It comes with a video attachment, which is not narrated or subtitled, it doesn't have a description and it might well be Christmas stock footage from anywhere in southern Europe.

Here is the video, no Finnish language skill necessary.
http://www.yle.fi/java/areena/dispatcher/2623467.asx?bitrate=1000000

The second quality point I want to bring up is I've read of an incident where several Finnish newspapers just took an article from our largest, and when it turned out false they either didn't publish a correction or it wasn't enough to undo the damage. It's not all good in our printed media either.

Helsingin Sanomat (#1 newspaper) said The Social Insurance Institution of Finland (KELA) was found guilty in the European Human Rights Court - in reality they linked the wrong judgment to the wrong case. The turd of a report then made the rounds and ended up in 4 more papers.

Helsingin Sanomat made a mistake and the other papers just copy pasted the story without checking the background.

Both of these cases are similar in that they reveal a lack of professionalism. In the case of YLE it feels like they are whipping monkeys tied to typewriters to fill a quota, while the newspaper reporters hit "Copy" when the coffee break ends. This is what passes for news around here, but it's not much better elsewhere and I'll get to that too.