APPALLING

Reporters to Skip World Cup After Qatar Evicted Migrant Workers for Their Lodging

Finland’s largest daily newspaper won’t be sending reporters to cover the World Cup for the first time this century.

Finland’s largest newspaper, Helsingin Sanomat, says it won’t send reporters to the World Cup after they learned Qatar evicted migrant workers to create lodging for the paper’s journalists. It will be the first time in decades the paper won’t have reporters covering the tournament in person. Erkki Kylmanen, head of the paper’s sports department, told Reuters he’d considered nixing reporters’ trip for months because of media restrictions, but the Qatari government finalized his decision when news broke last month that officials emptied apartment blocks that housed thousands of Asian and African workers—a move to free up space for visiting fans and journos. “It is quite an unsound situation if we go there to write critical stories but go to bed in a place where people have been evicted from our way,” Kylmanen said.