Inside the world’s first TV station for and by people with learning disabilities

It’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 carrying a pink prime after I go to – and Petter Bjørkmo. “I even had pink hair!” Bjørkmo tells me, laughing, earlier than including that he needed to do away with it “because I am a reporter – reporters have to look decent.”

All the reporters at TV BRA – which implies “TV Good” – are disabled or autistic; most have a learning incapacity.

Every week, they put collectively an hour-long journal programme masking information, leisure and sport, which is broadcast on a serious Norwegian streaming platform, TV2 play, in addition to TV BRA’s personal app and web site.

The present is offered in easy Norwegian and is slower than mainstream information reviews, making it a lot simpler to observe. Between 4,000 and 5,000 people tune in each week.

The station’s 10 reporters are dotted round the nation, the place they work as native information correspondents.

Riedel, who has Down’s Syndrome, lives and works in the seaside metropolis of Stavanger. She has needed to be taught to comprise her effusive character.

“I have to follow the script and not talk about personal stuff – because here is about the news. When I work here I have to be very professional.”

Although she has been at the station for years, some issues are nonetheless novel, like the mascara she wears earlier than occurring digicam, and which she says weighs down her eyelids.

“I don’t need it because I look beautiful,” Riedel tells me with a smile. “I have inner beauty and outside beauty.”

“Yeah that’s right,” chuckles Camilla Kvalheim, the managing editor of the station – and additionally, at present, make-up artist. “But in the studio, with heavy lights and everything, you look paler.”

Kvalheim and a small technical crew who should not disabled produce and edit all the reviews.

Although Riedel and her colleagues have delicate learning impairments – they’ll largely converse English nicely, and journey with out help – some issues are a problem.

I watch as the crew tries to become familiar with a brand new autocue system. The presenters incessantly should learn a line many instances to get an excellent take.

“Sometimes it can be difficult to say what’s in the cue cards, so we have to do it again and again,” says Kvalheim. She additionally has to supply on-the-job coaching for her crew, who didn’t examine journalism at college earlier than becoming a member of the TV station.

Nevertheless her expectations of her crew are excessive.

“She says: ‘Can you please do that again? Can you repeat what you said? Can you look directly into the camera, I want you to be perfect – this is very important,’” says Riedel.

“And when she is being proud, when we are finished, then she says: ‘I like this part! I like this part! That is what I want to see! Use your energy to be the best that you can be!’”

It’s been identified that people with learning disabilities might be held again by overly optimistic suggestions, which stops them from growing their expertise. That just isn’t a difficulty right here.

“If we are going to be seen by the audience we have to have a professional look,” says Kvalheim unapologetically. “If they are going to be respected as reporters and journalists they need to follow the ethical standards of other news organisations.”

The origins of TV BRA started greater than a decade in the past, when she was working as a instructor for people with a learning 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 digicam out, the dynamic between her and the people she was working with modified.

“Suddenly when we were working together on those films, we were a crew, we were a team. It wasn’t me over them – we were equal,” Kvalheim recollects.

Finding that her inventive collaborators had a lot to say about 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 should 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.

A great job, then, that the crew are motivated by issues aside from cash. In Norway, as in each nation, people with learning disabilities face points starting from low employment charges to entry to help and housing. Being in a position to perceive the information empowers the wider group to marketing campaign on these points.

A latest report from Petter Bjørkmo is a living proof. He visited a lady with extra extreme learning disabilities, who lives in sheltered lodging in Trondheim. “The city – the government – wants to take away her shopping,” he instructed me, that means her finances to be accompanied to the retailers by a help employee.

“They told her that she has to go online. But she can’t! Because she can’t speak very well, it’s hard for her to get online to buy food. She needs help!”

Bjørkmo’s report a obtained a “massive response” from viewers, says Kvalheim, although it didn’t trigger the native authorities to rethink their place.

“TV BRA is very important,” agrees Svein Andre Hofsø, one other reporter. “Because we are talking about people with a disability, and what are our rights in real 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. Before the final parliamentary election, in 2021, Andre obtained the probability to don his detective’s fedora once more, however this time his job was to grill varied politicians on their insurance policies in his tongue-in-cheek model.

One such sequence exhibits 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 Party – strolls exterior however behind a pillar, a stooge is ready to ambush him. As Hofsø appears on, the stooge throws a butterfly web over the unsuspecting Støre.

In the subsequent scene, we see Støre in a chair in a basement. Hofsø shines an angle-poised lamp in his face, and exhibits him images of disabled people wanting unhappy and lonely. “If we vote for you, what will you do for us?”

At this level, Støre units out his insurance policies for disabled people. And after the election, he did certainly grow to be prime minister.

Camilla Kvalheim laughs when she recollects the encounter. “That was very funny. Every time we’ve met him since, he says, ‘Oh – are you going to catch me in that butterfly net?!’”

On the day I go to TV BRA, they’re paid a go to from Silje Hjemdal, an area lawmaker for the right-wing Progress Party.

A crew of 4 reporters quiz her on every little 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 about the undertaking). Kvalheim is there too, steering the questions.

Hjemdal’s solutions are critical, however there’s additionally a heat to the encounter; she is a long-term supporter of the station .“A lot of politicians now know what TV BRA is, so I would say it’s a big, big progress, just the five last years,” she tells me.

TV BRA just isn’t the solely TV information station offered by people with learning disabilities. Similar, albeit smaller, programmes exist in Iceland and Denmark. Meanwhile Slovenia, Holland and a number of different nations supply an “easy news” service – simplified reviews, although not offered by people with a learning incapacity.

For viewers of TV BRA, this type of service is crucial. “I think this TV station is really important for our community,” says Anne-Britt Ekerhovd, a fan of the station, who has a learning incapacity. “They explain things really well. In different news like NRK, they explain it too hard for us to understand. TV BRA is much easier to understand.”

Another fan of the station, Espen Giertsen, agrees: “There is something special about this – they are making TV in a new way.”

TV BRA’s reporters are very acutely aware of the essential position they’ve in serving this often-neglected viewers.

“If they have tonnes of weight on themselves, I want them to lift it up, so they can be free, so they can feel like they are accepted,” says Emily Ann Riedel.

People Fixing the World – The pioneering TV information service

TV BRA in Norway is a singular media organisation. Their fortnightly nationwide information present is offered by reporters who’ve learning disabilities or are autistic.

Through interviews with politicians and different authority figures the station goals to carry the highly effective to account, whereas additionally altering the manner that people with learning 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 future.