Iltasanomat continues its campaign to promote Stubb for the next Finnish presidential race

Iltasanomat(IS) (which belongs to the same company as Helsingin Sanomat) continues its overt campaign for Alexander Stubb, perhaps in preparation for the next presidential campaign.

In this article IS exaggerates and falsifies the conditions in which Stubb landed in Tbilisi, Georgia, stating that he is "well, even if the airport was being bombed before he arrived".

Well, the reality is (according to Reuters), that there was one (yes, one) bomb dropped on a near-by military airport and it happened (same article) hours before Stubb and French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner arrived at the airport.

Surely Finland has enough brave and corageous people, we don't really need to invent a false event to believe that Stubb (and all others that will run for president, I'm sure) is courageous. If you agree with this, then you must also agree that the conditions were falsified to give undeserved attention to one detail (the perilous arrival of courageous Stubb) as opposed to focusing on the issue, Stubb (as OCDE chairman) was traveling to represent Europe in the cease-fire efforts.

Maybe IS (just) did a pitiful journalistic job and took at face value the statement by Georgian's president that Russia had bombed the airport "just half-hour before they [Kouchner and Stubb] arrived".

Or maybe IS just "believed" the Interior Ministry spokes person that stated that the bomb fell only 200 meters away from a runway (yet no damage was caused).

Of course, they could have checked google to see the AFP release (here's another)

If the author of the IS article had spent some time checking the sources (as should be done), the "other side of the story" could also have been found. Turns out, of course, the "other side" is not that reliable either, which makes the journalist's difficult enough as to prevent it from making categoric affirmations of danger to our "beloved" Stubb. But such is life, and IS had no problem putting the news item in the first page of their paper version today.

I guess the SPD should wake up and start putting it's candidate on the press already. Stubb is not losing any time -- the race for the next president in Finland has started.