Video proof of the Eurovision smear campaign

Torbjörn Ek

Head of the Swedish delegation: ”I have to bring this to the attention of the EBU again”

This is the video proving that the Facebook account of Eurovision Song Contest official Jarmo Siim was used to discredit Sweden’s representative, Måns Zelmerlöw.

Christer Björkman, head of the Swedish delegation, reacted strongly when he was presented with the evidence.

“This is really quite remarkable,” he said. “I will have to bring this to the attention of the EBU again.”

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The video, which Aftonbladet can now release, shows that the message was indeed sent from the Facebook account that Jarmo Siim, communications coordinator for the Eurovision Song Contest and editor-in-chief of the Eurovision.tv website, has been using for some years.

The message was sent in early April to a Greek journalist who was urged to discredit Sweden’s Eurovision entry Heroes, performed by Måns Zelmerlöw.

“Between us, keep on bashing the Swedish song and put pressure on us,” the message read.

Aftonbladet confirmed the day before the Eurovision final that the message, first published on Typologies.gr, the media blog of Greek newspaper Paron, was authentic and sent from the Facebook account of Jarmo Siim. This was despite a denial by Jon Ola Sand, EBU executive supervisor of the Eurovision Song Contest.

”Really quite remarkable”

Late last night, Aftonbladet showed Christer Björkman a video of us again verifying that the Facebook message is authentic. And he reacted strongly:

“This is really quite remarkable,” he exclaimed. “Now that Aftonbladet has showed me this, I will have to bring this to the attention of the EBU again.”

The next meeting of the Eurovision Song Contest’s reference group - the highest governing body - will take place on 18th June.

“The most powerful thing I can do is to bring this to the reference group,” said Björkman. “But I will bring it to the attention of Jon Ola Sand as soon as tomorrow [Friday] so I can ensure this will be on the agenda. Jon Ola must see this video with his own eyes.”

Our source wishes to remain anonymous to not risk the possibility of not receiving journalist accreditation for the Contest again. There has been talk of the EBU using Eurovision accreditations as a way of preventing criticism.

“If that is the case, it would be extremely unfortunate,” said Björkman.

How we recorded the evidence - and what you see in the video

Aftonbladet has already verified that the Facebook message is authentic.

To strengthen the evidence further we have now also recorded another verification using Skype.

The laptop to the right in the video belongs to our source, the greek journalist. The screen to the left shows our reporter's screen on link via Skype.

Aftonbladet has masked the video to prevent that the identity of the source is revealed.

This is what the video shows:

The message and the sender

The source clicks on to the actual Facebook direct message, sent from a profile using the name Jarmo Siim. The URL for the sent message was https://www.facebook.com/messages/jarmosiim

There after clicking on the sender’s profile, which is identical to the official profile of Jarmo Siim: https://www.facebook.com/jarmosiim

To be completely sure that it really is the Facebook profile of Jarmo Siim, Aftonbladet makes the source change the ‘www’ of the URL to ‘graph’ - which is how you can see the user ID of the actual profile.

This information is then double-checked on the screen to the left where Aftonbladet's reporter uses his own laptop to enter Jarmo Siim’s official Facebook profile and extracting the user ID in the same way as described above, switching ‘www’ in the URL to ‘graph’.

The user ID, 598182632, proves to be identical to the ID of the sender of the Facebook direct message that was received by the source.

Theoretically, another person could have sent the direct message without Jarmo Siim’s knowledge. To protect our source, Aftonbladet cannot expand on this more than to clarify that the message received was part of a lengthy Facebook conversation between Jarmo Siim’s profile and that of the source. This is also visable in the video.

Why is Aftonbladet not naming its source?

The media’s obligation to protect its sources is part of the Swedish constitution with regards to the Swedish freedom of the press act.

This legislation gives the right of anonymity to anyone who gives information with the intent that it be published. This imposes a strict requirement of confidentiality on journalists, guaranteeing that the identity of the source will not be disclosed in any way possible.

Breaking this law could lead to up to a year in prison for any journalist who contravenes it.

In Aftonbladet’s dealings with the source for this report, we have agreed to refer to him in the same way as has already been made public in the article published on Typologies.gr - as “the source’, “he/him”, and “the Greek journalist”.