NRK has received over 3,600  complaints about a girl wearing a hijab on a Norwegian non-fiction TV documentary

Faten Mahdi Al-HussainiFaten Mahdi Al-Hussaini.Photo: Terje Pedersen / NTB scanpix

The complaint committee  has received a record number of complaints about the program, ‘Faten tar valget’ on NRK, even though the program hasn’t yet been aired.

 

‘It can’t be about the content, because no-one has seen it yet,’  the Broadcasting Director, Thor Gjermund Eriksen, told NRK news.

 

He said the tone in several of the complaints was hateful and prejudiced.

 

On Monday, ‘Faten tar valget’ passed the number of complaints received in 2015, which came in the wake of  Fredrik Skavlan having interviewed the Swedish Democrats leader, Jimmy Åkesson, on a Friday night.

 

Many of the recent complainants have been in response to NRK hiring a program leader who wears a hijab, when Liv Kristin Sælmann,  as program leader in 2013, didn’t wear a crucifix necklace when presenting NRK news broadcasts.

 

The chief executive said the two conditions are not comparable.

 

‘NRK has a rule that program managers who lead news or current affairs programs should have a neutral appearance.
One shouldn’t wear a crucifix, hijab or, for that matter, a green hat on those.

 

This is something else, here we  tell the story of a young, Norwegian, Muslim girl who makes a decision to participate in the parliamentary elections’, said Eriksen.

 

 

© NTB Scanpix / Norway Today