Rogue Reporters

Finland in fall of 1981. The President of 25 years Urho Kekkonen has just resigned. Out of the blue a mysterious tell-all book about politics, written by an anonymous group of authors, appears in bookstores all over the country. The book, called “The Spoils of Tamminiemi” reveals never before told aspects about what the finnish politicians are actually up to behind the scenes. Throughout that fall the book is a huge bestseller, and people speculate about who might have written it. In February of 1982 they get their answer, when the CEO of the countries largest publishing house shamefully reveals the identities of the authors on live TV. Soon everyone knows that the culprits are the reporters at the political department of the newspaper Helsingin Sanomat. A huge scandal follows. The documentary Rogue Reporters is a deep dive into cold war politics in Finland, at a point where the most prominent political journalists in the country decide to break the most holy of rules: to tell the truth about Finlands tradition of selfcensorship and the influence of the Soviet Union in Finnish politics and journalism.