Instructions for making a complaint
Draw up your complaint carefully to facilitate its processing. Read the instructions before you submit your complaint.
1. About what issues can you submit a complaint?
You can submit a complaint to the Council for Mass Media (CMM) if a medium, in your opinion, breaches good professional practice. Good professional practice is determined in the Guidelines for Journalists. Familiarise yourself with the Guidelines before submitting a complaint.
You can submit a complaint about any media subject to the authority of the CMM, in other words, the majority of Finnish media. You can check here if the medium in question is part of a CMM member organisation or if it is an independent member directly within the sphere of the CMM. The complaint can be aimed at an individual journalist working for the media if the case concerns the methods by which they acquire information.
A complaint can also be submitted about an authority or independent party that is seeking to limit publicity or hamper the exercise of the freedom of speech. In such a case, select restriction of the freedom of speech as the topic of your complaint.
2. Who can submit a complaint?
Anyone can submit a complaint. The complainant can be a person, company, association or another organisation. However, you can only submit a complaint concerning violation of privacy or extremely negative publicity if you are the concerned party or have the consent of the concerned party to submit a complaint.
If you are submitting a complaint on behalf of another party, ask them to provide a free-form consent and attach it to the complaint. If you are submitting a complaint in the name of a company, association or other party, you have to have the permission of the party in question or authority based on your position.
Anonymous complaints or complaints with incomplete contact information will not be processed.
3. What limitations are there?
Submit the complaint within three months of the publication of the article or programme in question. The Council for Mass Media cannot accept a complaint for processing if it has been submitted late, except when there is a special reason to do so. The time limitation applies to online articles as well.
If an offence has been reported to the police regarding the same matter, the CMM will not process your complaint. Furthermore, a resolution by the CMM cannot be sought for the purposes of utilising it later in a court of law. Whether or not a matter in legal proceedings and a complaint are essentially overlapping will be decided on a case-by-case basis. If necessary, please phone the counselling number of the CMM for advice.
Assessment of advertisements is not included in the duties of the CMM. The CMM can only consider advertisements in terms of whether or not they differ sufficiently from editorial content.
4. What is required of a complaint?
The maximum length of a complaint is 5,000 characters. Submit the complaint using an online form that can be accessed from the link at the bottom of the page. A good complaint is one in which you express concisely and correctly how the medium you are complaining about has, in your opinion, breached the Guidelines for Journalists in the article that is the subject of the complaint.
Please attach a copy of the article to the complaint. If your complaint concerns a radio or television programme, please send a link or specify the broadcast time and channel.
The complaint shall only concern the versions of the article that are clearly specified in the complaint. An online article alone is not sufficient if your complaint specifically concerns an article in a printed newspaper or magazine.
5. What do you need to do?
If your complaint concerns a material error, you need to contact the editorial staff first and request that the error be corrected. If there is a specific channel for notifying errors, please use it. A complaint can be made only if the medium does not correct the essential material error appropriately in spite of your request. Save the documentation showing your communication with the editorial staff and attach it to the complaint.
Additionally, you must personally notify the editorial staff about a self-published comment that breaches the Annex of the Guidelines for Journalists. If this notification does not help, you can submit a complaint. Document your notification and attach it to the complaint.
6. How will the complaint proceed?
The processing of a complaint is impartial and free of charge. The complaint will first be assessed by the Chair of the CMM. They will decide if the complaint is going to be processed by the entire assembly of the CMM. The complainant and the medium in question will receive the decision of the Chair by email. As there are many complaints waiting to be processed, the current waiting time for a decision is several months. If the decision is made for the Council to process the complaint, the CMM will ask for the medium in question to provide a response. After that, the Council will issue on the culpability of the subject of the complaint. All Council’s resolutions are published on the website of the CMM. Furthermore, the medium subject to the complaint shall publish the decision regarding its culpability.
7. How will information be used?
The name of the complainant will not be published on the Council’s website unless there is a specific reason for this, but the name will not specifically be kept confidential, either. The name will be made known to the medium that was subject to the complaint.
The complaint material will be archived and available for, for example, research purposes. In sensitive matters, the Chair may, upon a justified request, anonymise the complainant and limit the publication of the complaint material.
For more information about the handling of personal information at the CMM, please read the privacy policy.
8. Where do I get more information?
Information about the interpretation of the Guidelines for Journalists is available in the Application guide (in Finnish) and the resolutions issued by the CMM.
You can also request advice by email ([email protected]) or by phone (+358 (0)9 1357494).
These instructions for submitting a complaint have been updated on 24th of February 2025.