Taloustutkimus Research carried out a survey on Yle's credibility as a news source based on interviews with 1,019 people.
Using the same methodology as in 2015-2016, the results found that 86 percent of respondents felt that Yle was a reliable news source.
In the previous survey, which was carried out in October 2016, and made public in December 2016, 90 percent of respondents considered Yle to be a credible source of news.
The October 2016 poll was taken before the resignation of two Yle journalists in December 2016 following a much-publicised brouhaha in which Prime Minister Juha Sipilä crossed swords with two of the national broadcaster's journalists over their reporting on a potential conflict of interest situation involving the state-owned mining company Terrafame and a contractor owned by Sipilä family members.
Independent coverage?
In the most recent survey, respondents were also asked their impression of how independent Yle’s news coverage is. Of respondents, 47 percent said they felt Yle's news coverage was independent and unbiased. Last October, that figure was 48 percent whereas during the years 2013-2016 it stood at 51 percent.
In the most recent poll, 73 percent of respondents said they felt that Yle's news programming was valuable to Finnish society.
