Reykjavík Grapevine - 06.05.2016, Blaðsíða 16

Iceland Was Always
Too Good To Be True
Words CLEMENS BOMSDORF Photo by ART BICNICK
Iceland has a lot to be proud of and there
are things that can be learned from Ice-
land’s recovery, but perfect it is not. The
2008 crisis was at least in some part
homegrown, and to see its recovery as
flawless is to neglect a great deal of in-
ternal conflicts and moral shortcom-
ings faced by Icelanders on the path to
recovery.
Internationally, the Panama Papers
brought to light details that in some cas-
es were already known in Iceland. But
without this disclosure that made the
world aware of what was possible in Ice-
land, the Prime Minister would not have
been forced out. Hence, newspapers like
The Guardian and Süddeutsche Zeitung
not only contributed to transparency,
but also to democracy in Iceland.
However, before the Panama Papers
it would have been perfectly possible for
foreign media to report on Iceland and
its elites’ disproportionate offshoring.
That Finance Minister Bjarni Bene-
diktsson had a Swiss bank account was
already reported in 2010 by local me-
dia. So too was was his involvement in
extracting approximately €320 million
out of Iceland on behalf of private enti-
ties just before the country’s banks col-
lapsed, taking society down with it.
Local banks bought ads encouraging
the upper middle class to offshore per-
sonal wealth as early as 1999. Iceland’s
offshoring is and has always been an
open secret. Owning an offshore com-
pany was practically a status symbol for
Iceland’s old money and privatization
profiteers.
Iceland's
Reagan
and
Thatcher
Iceland is as im-
perfect as others.
It is a small coun-
try where almost
everybody knows
each other; of-
ten journalists,
businessmen and
politicians, who
should be oppo-
nents, went to
school together, are friends and some-
times part of the same family.
Take Davíð Oddsson, the politician
who shaped Iceland at least as much as
Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher
shaped their countries. It is symptomat-
ic of Iceland that he could go from Prime
Minister, laying down the policies for
an exaggerated boom, to the head of the
Central Bank, where he does nothing
to prevent the financial meltdown, and
then finally to Morgunblaðið, Iceland’s
establishment paper, where he becomes
editor-in-chief, re-
writing history. Did
it infuriate people?
Yes, of course it did.
Was there a signifi-
cant decline in read-
ership and revenue?
Yes, but again the
profit of silencing
critical journalism
is well worth the
loss.
It reminds one of
Putin, Erdogan or
any banana repub-
lic, and shouldn’t be
accepted—certain-
ly not in a country
praised as the per-
fect example of a democratic society.
The situation in Iceland isn’t just an
Icelandic matter, it is an international
one. When everyone outside the coun-
try talks about Iceland idealistically it
undermines what little criticism exists
internally. The risks here are the same
Clemens Bomsdorf
has since the early
2000s worked as
a Nordic corre-
spondent. His work
about Iceland has
been published in
Zeit online, The Wall
Street Journal and
The Art Newspaper,
amongst others.
Additional reporting
by Thor Fanndal, an
Icelandic investiga-
tive reporter. He is
writing for Kven-
nabladid and Frét-
tatiminn. Currently
he also attends the
Masters in Journal-
ism Programme at
Edinburgh Napier
University.
The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 5 — 2016
16
as with any child showered with compli-
ments by parents and family. Constantly
telling a child it is smarter, braver and
better than the rest will convince any
child these claims are true and force it to
ignore the obvious signs to the contrary.
Foreshadowing
revelations
The journalists behind the Panama Pa-
pers have done us a great service, but
let’s not pretend the leak is the first we
heard of this. That simply is not the
case, neither in Iceland nor in the rest of
the world.
Bloomberg, for example, reported
on a scandalous Visa deal in Iceland.
In 2014, public assets of the credit card
company were sold to relatives of the
Finance Minister at a cut rate. General
interest newspapers paid scant atten-
tion. The scandal—though it lead to ma-
jor changes at the board of a state-run
bank, that years before was at the core
of the financial crisis!—was not seen as
interesting enough, was complicated to
understand, and, after all, stories about
Iceland and elves are cheaper to produce
and have a tendency to trend.
The same reason might apply to the
lack of coverage after a recent change of
law allowing the infamous banksters to
be moved out of prison ahead of sched-
ule without international notice. These
are the same bankers which the media
the world over has hailed Iceland for
sentencing.
Editors are not the only ones at fault.
We reporters should have pushed harder
and pitched more on what lies beneath
the glossy surface of Iceland’s recovery.
The banana republic of Iceland has all
the elements of an interesting story and
can offer value to readers the world over.
Putin equivalents
Iceland has not gone unreported; just
overpraised. While Icelanders attempt-
ed to reclaim their society from those
that bankrupted it, international media
told readers all over the world of a serene
and cute island in the north.
Icelandic journalists must now take
the time to wonder if they did every-
thing in their power to make sure all
relevant information was published in a
way that offered the necessary perspec-
tive for the Icelandic public.
Perhaps the Icelandic media could
have stopped the equivalents of Putin
and Erdogan from running this perfect
little island, but the task wasn’t made
any easier by foreign colleagues con-
stantly telling the rest of the world how
delightful and wonderful it is to live in
this magical land of democracy and
purity called Iceland. It is simply ludi-
crous to believe there exists an island
that somehow consistently manages to
be unaffected by greed, corruption and
profiteering.
SHARE: gpv.is/toogood
“Was there
a significant
decline in reader-
ship and revenue?
Yes, but again
the profit of
silencing critical
journalism is well
worth the loss.”
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