TV BRAIt’s maybe no shock that the décor of TV BRA’s new studio is stunning pink.
It’s the favorite color of two of the station’s reporters, Emily Ann Riedel – who’s sporting a pink high after I go to – and Petter Bjørkmo. “I even had pink hair!” Bjørkmo tells me, laughing, earlier than including that he needed to eliminate it “as a result of I’m a reporter – reporters should look respectable.”
All of the reporters at TV BRA – which suggests “TV Good” – are disabled or autistic; most have a studying incapacity.
Each week, they put collectively an hour-long journal programme overlaying information, leisure and sport, which is broadcast on a significant Norwegian streaming platform, TV2 play, in addition to TV BRA’s personal app and web site.
‘I’ve interior magnificence and out of doors magnificence’
The present is offered in easy Norwegian and is slower than mainstream information stories, making it a lot simpler to observe. Between 4,000 and 5,000 individuals tune in each week.
The station’s 10 reporters are dotted across the nation, the place they work as native information correspondents.
Riedel, who has Down’s Syndrome, lives and works within the seaside metropolis of Stavanger. She has needed to study to comprise her effusive persona.
“I’ve to observe the script and never speak about private stuff – as a result of right here is in regards to the information. After I work right here I’ve to be very skilled.”
Though she has been on the station for years, some issues are nonetheless novel, just like the mascara she wears earlier than happening digital camera, and which she says weighs down her eyelids.
“I don’t want it as a result of I look lovely,” Riedel tells me with a smile. “I’ve interior magnificence and out of doors magnificence.”
“Yeah that’s proper,” chuckles Camilla Kvalheim, the managing editor of the station – and in addition, presently, make-up artist. “However within the studio, with heavy lights and every thing, you look paler.”
Kvalheim and a small technical crew who are usually not disabled produce and edit all of the stories.
Though Riedel and her colleagues have gentle studying impairments – they’ll largely converse English nicely, and journey with out help – some issues are a problem.
I watch because the group tries to become familiar with a brand new autocue system. The presenters steadily should learn a line many instances to get a superb take.
“Typically it may be tough to say what’s within the cue playing cards, so we’ve to do it time and again,” says Kvalheim. She additionally has to offer on-the-job coaching for her group, who didn’t research journalism at college earlier than becoming a member of the TV station.
Nonetheless her expectations of her group are excessive.
“She says: ‘Are you able to please try this once more? Are you able to repeat what you mentioned? Are you able to look straight into the digital camera, I would like you to be good – this is essential,’” says Riedel.
“And when she is being proud, once we are completed, then she says: ‘I like this half! I like this half! That’s what I wish to see! Use your vitality to be the most effective you could be!’”
It’s been pointed out that folks with studying disabilities may be held again by overly optimistic suggestions, which stops them from creating their abilities. That’s not a problem right here.
“If we’re going to be seen by the viewers we’ve to have knowledgeable look,” says Kvalheim unapologetically. “If they will be revered as reporters and journalists they should observe the moral requirements of different information organisations.”
The origins of TV BRA started greater than a decade in the past, when she was working as a trainer for individuals with a studying incapacity at a residential care dwelling in Bergen, and determined to pursue a ardour for filmmaking. She discovered that as quickly as she obtained a digital camera out, the dynamic between her and the individuals she was working with modified.
“Abruptly once we have been working collectively on these movies, we have been a crew, we have been a group. It wasn’t me over them – we have been equal,” Kvalheim remembers.
Discovering that her artistic collaborators had a lot to say in regards to the world, she was inspired to proceed the work, and it steadily constructed momentum.
Now it’s a nationwide community, with a correct studio – however Kvalheim admits that her reporters are usually not paid the identical type of cash as their friends at different networks.
The station receives state funding, and has income from supplying TV2 with a weekly present, however cash is extraordinarily tight.
An excellent job, then, that the group are motivated by issues apart from cash. In Norway, as in each nation, individuals with studying disabilities face points starting from low employment charges to entry to help and housing. With the ability to perceive the information empowers the broader neighborhood to marketing campaign on these points.
‘Speaking about rights’
A current report from Petter Bjørkmo is a living proof. He visited a girl with extra extreme studying disabilities, who lives in sheltered lodging in Trondheim. “Town – the federal government – desires to remove her purchasing,” he advised me, which means her price range to be accompanied to the retailers by a help employee.
“They advised her that she has to go surfing. However she will’t! As a result of she will’t converse very nicely, it’s exhausting for her to get on-line to purchase meals. She wants assist!”
Bjørkmo’s report a obtained a “large response” from viewers, says Kvalheim, although it didn’t trigger the native authorities to rethink their place.
“TV BRA is essential,” agrees Svein Andre Hofsø, one other reporter. “As a result of we’re speaking about individuals with a incapacity, and what are our rights in actual life.”
Hofsø, a roving information reporter primarily based in Oslo, was well-known even earlier than becoming a member of TV BRA.
He took the title position in a 2013 movie, Detective Downs. Earlier than the final parliamentary election, in 2021, Andre obtained the prospect to don his detective’s fedora once more, however this time his job was to grill numerous politicians on their insurance policies in his tongue-in-cheek fashion.
One such sequence reveals him sitting on a bench exterior the parliament constructing in Oslo, pretending to learn a newspaper. A politician, Jonas Gahr Støre – the chief of the Labour Occasion – strolls exterior however behind a pillar, a stooge is ready to ambush him. As Hofsø seems on, the stooge throws a butterfly internet over the unsuspecting Støre.
Within the subsequent scene, we see Støre in a chair in a basement. Hofsø shines an angle-poised lamp in his face, and reveals him photographs of disabled individuals trying unhappy and lonely. “If we vote for you, what is going to you do for us?”
At this level, Støre units out his insurance policies for disabled individuals. And after the election, he did certainly grow to be prime minister.
Camilla Kvalheim laughs when she remembers the encounter. “That was very humorous. Each time we’ve met him since, he says, ‘Oh – are you going to catch me in that butterfly internet?!’”
On the day I go to TV BRA, they’re paid a go to from Silje Hjemdal, a neighborhood lawmaker for the right-wing Progress Occasion.
A group of 4 reporters quiz her on every thing from roads to immigration, and what she thinks of plans for the lavish new nationwide theatre in Oslo (being from Bergen, she has some doubts in regards to the challenge). Kvalheim is there too, steering the questions.
Hjemdal’s solutions are severe, however there may be additionally a heat to the encounter; she is a long-term supporter of the station .“A variety of politicians now know what TV BRA is, so I might say it’s a giant, large progress, simply the 5 final years,” she tells me.
‘Making TV in a brand new method’
TV BRA shouldn’t be the one TV information station offered by individuals with studying disabilities. Comparable, albeit smaller, programmes exist in Iceland and Denmark. In the meantime Slovenia, Holland and several other different international locations provide an “straightforward information” service – simplified stories, although not offered by individuals with a studying incapacity.
For viewers of TV BRA, this type of service is important. “I believe this TV station is absolutely necessary for our neighborhood,” says Anne-Britt Ekerhovd, a fan of the station, who has a studying incapacity. “They clarify issues very well. In numerous information like NRK, they clarify it too exhausting for us to grasp. TV BRA is way simpler to grasp.”
One other fan of the station, Espen Giertsen, agrees: “There’s something particular about this – they’re making TV in a brand new method.”
TV BRA’s reporters are very acutely aware of the necessary position they’ve in serving this often-neglected viewers.
“If they’ve tonnes of weight on themselves, I would like them to elevate it up, to allow them to be free, to allow them to really feel like they’re accepted,” says Emily Ann Riedel.
People Fixing the World – The pioneering TV news service
TV BRA in Norway is a novel media organisation. Their fortnightly nationwide information present is offered by reporters who’ve studying disabilities or are autistic.
By way of interviews with politicians and different authority figures the station goals to carry the highly effective to account, whereas additionally altering the best way that folks with studying disabilities are seen.
Our reporter William Kremer be part of them of their flashy new studio in Bergen the place the journalists share a few of their greatest tales and inform us about their aspirations for the longer term.
