ABSTRACT
The Finnish power investigation known as VALTA, conducted between 2007 and 2010, analysed the political, economic and cultural transformations that Finland had gone through over the previous two decades. The issue was how internationalisation and European integration had affected Finnish power structures, practices and power holders. In one of the projects, devoted to ‘Power Elites and Concepts of Power’, four researchers examined how key concepts of what they termed the Finnish market regime had been introduced, contested and used in the exercise of societal power.1 One of the sub-projects, focusing on how the concept of globalisation was apprehended in the editorials of the major Finnish newspaper Helsingin Sanomat (HS), at the turn of the current century, is the subject of the present article. The article argues that journalism can be seen as an ongoing power investigation in its ideals and goals, but questions how this goal is achieved. It shows that HS uncritically subscribed to the paradigm of economic competition and failed to assume the role of a critical investigator prepared to challenge power, as a modern and vital political culture would have required. At the turn of the century, globalisation was the subject of much debate in Finland.
Internationally, it had become a powerful concept referring to an imagined worldwide societal transformation after the end of the Cold War. Usually globalisation has been connected discursively to the global market system; it has been used to legitimise what is called a competition economy or state.2 Significant steps towards such a form of economy
