Last year, Yle monitored the implementation of the new Yle law on textual content. This monitoring is now automated.
Textual content accounted for approximately 2% of all content produced by Yle between August and December 2022. The law entered into force in August 2022. Under the revised Yle Act, textual content is an important part of Yle’s publishing activities.
The new General Law requires that they must, as a rule, be linked to publications containing moving images or sound.
During the monitoring period (01.08-31.12.2022), the majority of articles on Yle will either link directly to a video or audio (40-50%) or have a thematic link (20-30%). A thematic link is when a text is linked to a programme or topic that has been or will be covered in a video or audio.
Instructions for the production of textual contents were made under the leadership of the corresponding editors at Yle.
– Even though text, image, sound and video mix and complement each other online, it is important that the law includes a record that Yle must also create content in text format. Texts are a necessary condition for Yle’s services to be available and accessible to different audience groups, says Törn-Mangs.
According to the Public Broadcasting Act, Yleisradio can produce textual content related to culture, learning and rapidly developing news events without restriction. This law’s so-called exception list guarantees that Yle can equally serve different audience groups and all Finns.
Almost a third of the articles have content according to the exception list of the General Law. In addition, a small proportion of Yle’s articles is non-journalistic content, such as bulletins.
Yle has renewed the technical platform for its article content so that from the beginning of 2023, monitoring and reporting of textual content will be automatic throughout the company. The supervision of the implementation of the Yle Act belongs to Yle’s supervisory board, which reports on the implementation of the task to the parliament.