Virtues of healthy mistrustful media in nuclear waste management

Trust is essential for nuclear waste management projects to prosper. The affected populations have to trust the responsible public and private actors and have confidence in the safety and viability of the project (e.g., Kinsella, 2016; Lehtonen et al., forthcoming; OECD‐NEA, 2003). 

What might first sound counterintuitive is that mistrust is not necessarily harmful – and that feeding “healthy” mistrust can be just as indispensable as trust. Watchdog journalism, as a founding pillar of liberal democracy, is a classic example. The very principle of mass media as a vigilant critic builds on the idea that mistrust has its essential virtues. 

Vigilant media is essential in ensuring that megaprojects in high-risk industries in the nuclear sector truly serve the public interest. High-level radioactive waste management is a case in point. Citizens need to be persuaded of the safety of such repositories, yet such confidence can only be built through open scrutiny, debate and critique – in essence, mistrust. Sceptical media can be vital in providing reassurance that the project has undergone transparent and rigorous scrutiny. The media can either enhance or undermine trust and confidence in nuclear waste management.

The high-trust Finland and the mistrustful France

However, the manifestations of vigilance and watchdog journalism are culturally defined. To explore such variation, we analysed high-level radioactive waste reporting in the leading Finnish and French newspapers in 2005-2018, when both countries’ waste repository projects were moving towards implementation. Finland aims to become the first in the world, its ONKALO repository due to become operational in the mid-2020s, while France’s Cigéo facility should start operation in the early 2030s. We found significant differences between the mistrustful watchdog journalism of Le Monde, and the trust-permeated reporting by Helsingin Sanomat. 

We started from the assumption that people’s trust in their fellow citizens and their institutions shape the ways in which the press media play their watchdog role. In terms of both interpersonal and institutional trust, Finland and France stand at nearly opposite ends of the spectrum: Finland represents a Nordic high-trust society, whereas France is often described as a “society of mistrust” (Agacinski, 2018; Melin, 2009; Special Eurobarometer, 2017).

Helsingin Sanomat and Le Monde: the trusted opinion-shapers

To analyse the Finnish and French variants of watchdog journalism, we studied how Helsingin Sanomat (HS) and Le Monde (LM), as the leading daily newspapers in the two countries, framed issues relating to nuclear waste management, particularly risks and safety. Through framing, the media define what is important, what should be emphasised and why. Framing redistributes power between key actors, by helping to determine which problem definitions, interpretations, moral judgements, and/or policy recommendations come to prevail (Chong & Druckman, 2007; Entman, 2007; Nisbet & Newman, 2015, p. 362; Scheufele & Tewksbury, 2007).

HS is Finland’s only major national daily newspaper, the second-most trusted news producer. It declares itself politically independent. In international comparison, it holds a unique position as the uncontested number one nationwide newspaper shaping public agendas and opinion.

Le Monde is the most read daily newspaper in France. Officially independent, it is often qualified as politically center-left. However, earlier research has shown that LM largely reflects the general French media agenda (Blanchard 2010, 325–334; Brouard & Guineaudeau 2015, 148–149). 

The final set of material consisted of those 135 articles in HS and 210 in Le Monde, which primarily addressed safety and risks associated with the respective country’s own repository project.

Performance-relevant or morality-relevant framings?

The findings show a sharp contrast in the ways in which LM and HS execute their civic vigilance function. The Finnish newspaper tended to reproduce government and industry frames, whereas Le Monde played a more conventional, liberal role as an independent watchdog and critic of the government and industry. HS framings reflected, firstly, “performance‐relevant information” exhibiting strong confidence in the repository project, and secondly, trust in the actors behind the project. LM, in turn, prioritised “morality-relevant information”, i.e., the trust relationships between the involved parties, and, to a lesser extent, scepticism in relation to the viability and safety of the repository. 

Where HS underlined the consistent advancement towards a reliably operating repository, LM evoked the numerous uncertainties and obstacles still on the way, including the multiple conflicts between the involved actors.

Finnish certainty, French ambivalence

In both countries, the nuclear sector has held a privileged position as a source of national pride and energyindependence, buttressed by the consistently pronuclear government policy. However, behind this similarity, the contrasting ways in which the newspapers portrayed the past and the future reveal distinct national imaginaries. Le Monde constantly evokes the ambiguous legacy of the French nuclear sector, as a symbol not only the country's modernization, technological prowess, and economic prosperity (Hecht, 2009), but also of a technocratic and secretive “Nuclear State” (Lepage, 2014), characterised by opacity, secrecy, and failed promises. By contrast, HS underlines continuity, predictability, and certainty. It describes the Finnish nuclear waste management as a success story, and nuclear energy as essential for the survival of the country’s vital export industry and a source of wellbeing.

As for the responsibility for future generations, HS rehearsed the government and industry argument that a repository spares future generations from having to tackle the waste problem. By contrast, LM reminded of a major intergenerational dilemma: by burying waste in a repository, current generations deprive future generations of the possibility to decide what to do with the waste.

Did Helsingin Sanomat fail and Le Monde succeed in the watchdog duty?

The lenience of HS in relation to industry and government raises interesting questions about the supposed exemplarity of Finnish nuclear waste management with respect to its democratic qualities. On the face of it, the comparison would suggest that the Finnish newspaper has failed in what Le Monde has succeeded: in fulfilling the media’s vigilant watchdog duty. By closely following industry and government framings, HS would hence foster “unwarranted trust” (Warren 1999), that is, trust as uncritical acceptance (Trettin & Musham 2000, 411).

A reading more permissive to the Finnish exceptionality is possible, however.  The differences between reporting by the two newspaper reflect also longstanding and historically shaped cultural and political traditions – between the Finnish trust‐based and the French mistrust‐based democracies. Hence, the liberal watchdog model may work – and may indeed be the only possibility – in the French mistrust-based tradition. By contrast, it could backfire in a Finnish high-trust context, by undermining the crucial institutional trust that the Nordic democracies rest upon. This hypothesis seems unlikely in light of recent findings showing a contrast between critical Swedish and lenient Finnish news reporting on nuclear waste – in two equally trust-based Nordic democracies (Kojo et al. 2020). However, the hypothesis that a specifically Finnish variant of civic vigilance might exist remains a possibility, and as such worth further exploration.

Source: Markku Lehtonen, Matti Kojo, Mika Kari, Tapio Litmanen: Healthy mistrust or complacent confidence? Civic vigilance in the reporting by leading newspapers on nuclear waste disposal in Finland and France. Risk, Hazards, & Crisis in Public Policy. 2021. 

See also the press release on UPF website.

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