The Finnish Parliament approves amendment to the Yle Act – text content will continue to be part of Yle's service

Yle will still be allowed to publish text content. As a general rule, this content must relate to content with video or audio.

On March 1, 2022, Parliament approved the revised Act on the Finnish Broadcasting Company, which now includes a provision on Yle's textual content.

Text content is still one way of providing a public service. In the future, textual content must, as a rule, be linked to content containing video or audio.

Yle can still produce textual content related to culture, learning and rapidly evolving news events without any restrictions.

"We already comply very well with the requirement of law to include text in video or audio content. We have emphasised the role of video, audio and entirely new forms of content in our digital services. The yle.fi -service is a good example of this. We don’t believe that the change in the law will have a major impact on the amount of textual content Yle produces or on our ability to serve our audiences," says Merja Ylä-Anttila, CEO of Yle.

Ylä-Anttila considers it important that the reform of the law recognises the importance of equal access to information for citizens, accessibility of services and broad freedom of expression.

The background to the law reform is a state aid complaint filed by the Finnish Media Federation in 2017 with the European Commission. The complaint related to, among other things, whether Yle's funding could be used for textual content.

Yle will have four months to implement the new law when it enters into force.