The commercial media uses more sensational rhetoric than non-commercial media. This was deduced in my thesis, in which I studied the differences between Ilta-Sanomat (IS) and Yleisradio Oy (Yle) in their news coverage in the matter of government’s statement on equality.

I wanted to find out whether the commercial media, which was represented by IS in my thesis, was more sensational with their texts than non-commercial media Yle. For my research material I chose texts considering the government’s statement on equality from both commercial and non-commercial media, because the subject was very divisive in the politics and in media in summer and autumn 2023.

As for the results, the commercial media indeed does use more sensational titles and structure in their texts. This does support the results of earlier research. On some occasions, some of the titles of commercial media were outright misleading. For my surprise, there was found some racist expressions in non-commercial media’s texts.