In the latest documentary episode of Brennpunkt – “Massage” – NRK talks about organized prostitution linked to massage parlors.
Primarily, the footage is set in downtown Bergen and many of the women you see in the documentary are unaware that they are being filmed. Many of the studio names appear and only the faces of the women entering and leaving the halls are obscured. Other characteristics of women are visible.
The week before release, Kirkens Bymisjon asked NRK not to release the documentary out of fear of the consequences for women.
– After the release, one of the women identified in the documentary said it “took an hour to destroy an entire life,” Church’s City Mission department head Kristine Moskvil Thorsen told Dagbladet.
Media24 mentioned the matter first.
– A lot to be responsible for
– Should have blurred the image better
Thorsen reacts strongly to several things about the documentary.
– I myself participate in the documentary where I try to give a better insight into the life situation of these women. I’ve always reacted to NRK’s approach and the very premise of the documentary, says Thorsen.
If it was NRK’s intention to help, they should have done differently, Thorsen believes.
– If the goal is to uncover a difficult situation, with the ultimate goal of helping the most vulnerable, I think they could have chosen a completely different approach.
For example, she believes that NRK could have chosen to look into the situation women are in, as many of the Thai women who come to Norway do not know what rights they have or where to seek help.
– It’s important to remember that there are many different women here with different stories, and how they ended up in the situation they’re in is also different.
Thorsen highlights one example of what he believes would have been a better starting point for the documentary:
– In one of the last scenes, NRK talks to a mother who is selling her daughter. The daughter is 22 and expresses frustration: “What options do I have?”, “What kind of work can I find?”. I think this question could have been a better premise and introduction to the investigative documentary.
Massage scandal: they bought sex
– Very problematic
Thorsen believes that NRK fails to safeguard people’s identities and lives. He believes NRK could have made the point of the documentary without exposing individuals.
– For example, you could remove company names, make where in the city it was filmed less visible, and add female voices. Now women are 100% identifiable and this is very problematic.
She also points out that many of these women have children who are in school and otherwise belong to local communities.
– And the children’s classmates know who has a Thai mother, says Thorsen.
Church’s City Mission fears the documentary could have serious consequences for women. It comes from past experiences.
– Many of the women will be exposed to more violence and harassment. They will find themselves in various difficult working situations. And by creating fear in the environment, such as fearing police action, it is possible for the activity to be moved into more closed arenas.
If that happens, it will be harder to help the most vulnerable, Thorsen believes.
– So the safety of women will be undermined and it will be more difficult for us and other actors to detect and help really vulnerable cases or, in the worst case, human trafficking.
Thorsen also reacts to the fact that alleged clients appear to be better anonymized than women, and points out that under Norwegian law it is illegal to buy sex, but not to sell it.
– The distinction between who is actually doing something criminal and who isn’t does not emerge, he argues.
The Curse of the Sex Purchase Act
Considering the registration of NRK for PFU
In the wake of the documentary, the Church’s Bymission has received many requests, both from women in the wider Thai community and from women taking part in the documentary.
According to Thorsen, many of the women must have also filed complaints directly with the NRK itself, and a closed group has also been set up on Facebook for people of Thai descent where signatures are collected to be sent to the channel.
– Most are very desperate, they feel exposed and stigmatized, says Thorsen.
She says many of the women taking part in the documentary believe they weren’t presented with the context for how interviews should be used well enough when they appeared for the interviews.
Nor should an interpreter have been used, and many of the women speak both Norwegian and English poorly.
– And regardless of what is shown on TV, it is clear that women do not want to be associated with what appears in the documentary.
Paragraph 3.9 of Vær varsom’s manifesto states that the press must behave thoughtfully in their journalistic work and that emotions, lack of media experience, ignorance or lack of judgment must not be abused.
Here, the Church’s City Mission now believes that NRK has not done good enough ratings, and therefore the organization is now considering registering the broadcaster with PFU.
– We will make this decision next/next week, says Thorsen.
This is how buying sex is punished
– Careful ethical evaluations
NRK editor-in-chief Reidar Kristiansen says the purpose of the documentary was to uncover questionable conditions and protect people from abuse and neglect.
– Here, NRK Brennpunkt surveyed the massage industry for two years, uncovering organized prostitution, extensive pimping and gross exploitation of vulnerable women in a very closed environment, Kristiansen tells Dagbladet.
Kristiansen says the editors faced dilemmas in their work on the documentary.
– However, we believe that the story is so important that it should be told. But we made extensive ethical assessments before publication, also in dialogue with the City Mission, and we made as many considerations as possible, also anonymizing all those involved.
Kristiansen also confirms that the channel used covert recordings several times, and that not everyone was aware that they were being filmed, but that this should only be done when necessary.
– This was done as a last resort and after careful ethical considerations, as it was the only way to document conditions. Very few wanted to be interviewed, but later, before publication, we let the various salons know that they had been filmed, says the editor-in-chief.
– Perceived as difficult
– He did several skid laps
NRK also believes that a pretty good job of anonymizing women has been done.
– While women are very open about what they work on in online ads, we have chosen to anonymize them. Women are being slandered and will not be recognized on the street, says Kristiansen.
On the part of the salons, the editors believe this could not have been better anonymised.
– The halls are clearly visible in the urban landscape, and it is inevitable that someone knows which halls we are talking about. NRK has carried out ethical assessments regarding which salons are exhibited.
According to Kristiansen, an attempt has been made to be careful with the use of images, with the awareness that this can be burdensome.
– Here we also had a good dialogue beforehand with the City Mission of the Church, they had good input on how we could do it as gentle as possible for people, and we followed a lot of this advice.
– It looks bad
– So important it should be said
The reason why what appear to be sex shoppers are more slanderous than the women in the documentary is because NRK cannot document the crimes.
– Clients are more maligned as we cannot document that they are buying sex, and it would be a great burden to be blamed for that. Furthermore, we believe that both women and men are maligned out of recognition, says Kristiansen.
The editor-in-chief says he understands that the documentary may be perceived as unpleasant by some, but that there is also a need to shed light on the content of the documentary.
– It’s a dilemma that innocent people may be exposed to stigmatization because of the documentary, but we still believe that the story is so important that it should be told. And then we have to point out that we haven’t released a documentary about Thai in general, but about what’s going on in the Thai massage industry, says Kristiansen.
He goes on to say that it is the publisher’s hope that the documentary will help increase awareness and debate about what Kristiansen describes as “the heart of the matter: how this can happen and how these women can get the help they need.”
Kristiansen denies that the editors did not use an interpreter.
– We used interpreters when needed. In most cases though, the women said no to an interview, and they also said no to getting us an interpreter, because they didn’t want to talk.
He also claims that everyone who attended the interview was offered to see their entry and approved the clips.
– They had no negative reactions to the documentary. In the other clips, we exclusively show the women who say no to the interview. These wastes help show how enclosed the environment is, says the editor-in-chief.
– Experienced as difficult for many
Kristiansen says Church’s Bymission is free to complain to NRK before PFU and that the channel understands that some may face greater stigma as a result of the documentary.
– We still think it’s fair to talk about the challenging conditions in the industry.
– Church’s City Mission itself said that the documentary paints an accurate picture of reality in massage parlors. We hope they can also be open to discussing how we as a society should deal with this and how victims in this system can get the help they need, Kristiansen says in conclusion.
