Crime reporter has an alleged affair with terror suspect

TV2 Crime reporter Karianne Solbrække was today exposed as the woman who allegedly had an affair with Arfan Qadeer Bhatti, who faces terror charges for the synagogue shootings in Oslo. TV2 did not want to release the reporters' name, but after names appeared on several web sites, Finansavisen finally let the name drop today.

Solbrække, who has been with TV2 since 2000, is an experienced journalist, covering, among other things, last year's robbery of Norsk Kontantservice in Stavanger. While Solbrække is not charged with anything (except maybe poor judgment in her selection of partners), releasing her name was still the right thing to do. TV2 rarely holds back names in other cases, so why should their own receive special treatment? And, as Solbrække is such an experienced and exposed reporter, the fact that she might have had an affair with a terror suspect is of public interest. The public should not have to worry about the objectivity of well-known reporters. I just hope that we are spared similar revelations in the future, lest the media lose its' credibility alltogether.

I post this after reading Knut Stian Olsen's request that bloggers should spread the Solbrække's name, and his reasons why we should do so.

Israeli official: Norway Israel's worst enemy

An Israeli unnamed official source claims that Norway is the country in the world that is most unfriendly towards Israel.

These allegations come after Jostein Gaarder's article in Aftenposten, which was written as a spontaneous response to Israel's invasion of Lebanon, as well as other critical remarks made by Norwegian officials and public figures.

Norwegians and Norwegian media are generally critical of Israel and their hard-line crackdown on the Palestinians and Lebanese, and rightfully so, in my opinion. Israel's response to the Hezbollah's bombs was excessive. Palestinians in the Gaza strip are suffering, and Israel's "eye-for-an-eye" policy probably creates more terrorists, just as the US invasion of Iraq has been proven to do. I'm not saying Israel can't respond to terrorist attacks. The Palestinians and Hezbollah has a lot to answer for, and going after terrorists is a legitimate policy. But not in the way Israel is currently doing it.

Disagreeing with the policy of another country is nothing new in international politics, but when Israel is criticised, they are far too quick to call the critique "thinly-veiled anti-semitism". This is a common response when a minority group feels threatened, or fails to achieve their goals. When it happens within a country, it is annoying and tiresome. But when a country starts thinking that way, dangerous things can happen...

Should Israel's actions be excused because of the Holocaust? Is the international society to close its eyes to the way Israel is oppressing Palestine? Or should we see Israel's actions today in the same light as we see other countries?

Dealing with climate change

I just watched an interesting debate on NRK TV on climate change. We all know the dangers by now, but what can the average Joe citizen do about it? And why is the government so reluctant in doing the things that would matter?

There are things that we can do, many of which aren't even all that much of a hassle. Turning off lights in rooms that aren't in use (no, Norwegians still haven't learned to do that), lowering the temperature indoors to 18-20 degrees, refrain from using terrace heaters in autumn, cycling or walking to work if you don't live too far away. Think before we go shopping for that fifteenth sweater. I'm sure most of us could do a fair bit if we only sat down and thought about it.

But a lot of the things that really would have an impact are up to the government. Norway is not a densely populated country. Most people live on small towns with less than 50.000 people, and are dependent on their cars for a lot of things. Owning a car is expensive, even if it just sits in the driveway. Public transport is also expensive, so when you have a car it pays to use it instead of taking the bus when you can. Lower public transport fares in peak hour would mean fewer cars on the roads. Lower fares and higher frequencies throughout the day and you might just see some people selling their cars. I know I would if public transport had been a viable option.

Bikes are even better than buses, in the few months without sub-zero temperatures. But there are few designated bike paths in Norwegian cities, and sharing the road with cars is not always smart, especially not on small rural roads where the cars speed by in 80 km/H. A small investment here, and people might just drag their bikes from out of the garage. Good for the environment, even better for public health.

Moving people from short-haul flights and on to the train would also benefit the environment. Most air travel between cities in southern Norway could be avoided with a high-speed train network, such as they are building in the rest of Europe. Norway already has the trains, but the high-speed tracks are missing, and there is small chance we'll see them anytime soon. And when the train ride from Oslo to Trondheim not only is over six hours long (compared to a 45 minute flight), but also is twice as expensive as flying, people will of course choose flying, even though planes emit more CO2 than any other form of transportation.

the government has the money to subsidise trains, public transport, bike paths and bio-fuelled cars, what is lacking is the political will to do something that really matters. Norway has earned so much money from oil that we cant' afford to spend any of it, and while the state government has a huge budget surplus, local government only gets crumbs. Hardly enough to cover basic public needs, let alone subsidise public transport or build cycle paths. It probably wouldn't have mattered even if local government had been given sufficient funds. The pre-WW2 days of "building the country" are long gone, replaced by a gang of petrol-crazed polluters speeding down the highway of mindless consumption.

Reality and the media

If it's on TV it has to be real, right? Wrong! The media presents us with an edited version of reality. The images we are shown are only a piece of the truth. A representation of what happened within the camera's frame at that exact moment when it was pointed towards something.

Sports is a good example of selective representation. In recent years, we've seen more cameras than spectators on some football matches. After the game we're given slow-motion reruns of situations to show how the referee made a bad decision, or how the goalkeeper should have saved that last shot. TV networks spend a lot of time with highlights and post-game analysis, supposedly objective. But this is rarely the case, at least not with the team I follow. For some reason (and I'm not being objective here, as I'm a fan), TV2, the channel with rights to the Norwegian Tippeliga, has a tendency to show how the opposition almost scored in this and that situation, or how the referee failed to give the opposing team a free kick or a penalty.

In doing this, TV creates an image that the opposition should have won the game, while as often as not the "objective" truth is that both teams had their chances. But TV wants to show one side of the story, and refrains from showing those situations.

This happening in sports might not be the end of the world. But imagine the same techniques in news coverage... You can't fit everything into a 30 second spot, so editors have to choose. And the choices are not always unbiased. War imagery is a good example. When TV showed us the Iraqis tearing down the statue of Saddam, were there other civilian Iraqis outside of the picture demonstrating against the statue being torn down? We don't know, because few of us were there...