The world’s first television station for and by people with learning disabilities

It’s perhaps no surprise that the decor at TV BRA’s new studio is shockingly pink.

It’s the favorite color of two of the station’s reporters, Emily Ann Riedel and Petter Bjørkmo, who was wearing a pink top when I visited. “I even have pink hair!” Bjorkmo told me with a laugh, before adding that he had to get rid of it, “because I’m a reporter—and reporters have to look presentable.”

All reporters at TV BRA (meaning “TV Good”) are disabled or autistic; most have learning disabilities.

They produce a weekly hour-long magazine show covering news, entertainment and sport, which airs on Norway’s main streaming platform TV2 play as well as TV BRA’s own app and website.

The program is presented in simple Norwegian and is slower than mainstream news coverage, making it easier to understand. Between 4,000 and 5,000 people watch each week.

The station’s 10 reporters are spread across the country serving as local news reporters.

Riedel has Down syndrome and lives and works in the seaside city of Stavanger. She must learn to control her enthusiastic personality.

“I have to follow a script and not talk about personal things – because this is about news. When I work here, I have to be very professional.

Even though she’s been working at the station for years, some things are still new, like the mascara she puts on before going on camera, which she says makes her eyelids heavy.

“I don’t need it because I look pretty,” Riddle told me with a smile. “I have inner beauty and outer beauty.”

“Yeah, that’s right,” laughed Camilla Kvalheim, the station’s editor-in-chief and now a makeup artist. “But in the studio, the lighting is so heavy that everything looks pale.”

Kvalheim and a small and healthy team of technical staff produce and edit all reports.

Even though Riddell and her colleagues have mild learning disabilities – they mostly speak English very well and travel without support – some things are a challenge.

I watched the team try to master the new auto-cue system. Speakers often need to read lines multiple times for good effect.

“Sometimes it’s hard to tell what’s in the cue cards, so we have to do it again and again,” Kvalheim said. She also had to provide on-the-job training to her team, who did not study journalism in college before joining the station.

Still, her expectations for the team are high.

“She said, ‘Can you do this again? Can you repeat what you said? Can you look directly into the camera?

“When she’s proud, when we’re done, she’ll say, ‘I loved this part! I loved this part! This is what I want to see! Use your energy and be the best you can be!”

Already pointed out People with learning disabilities may be held back by excessively positive feedback, preventing them from developing their skills. That’s not the issue here.

“If we’re going to be seen by an audience, we have to look professional,” Kvalheim said unapologetically. “If they want to be respected as reporters and reporters, they need to follow the ethical standards of other news organizations.”

The origins of TV BRA began over ten years ago when she was working as a teacher for people with learning disabilities in a nursing home in Bergen and decided to pursue her passion for filmmaking. She found that once she took out her camera, her relationships with her colleagues changed.

“Suddenly, when we were making these movies together, we became a crew, we became a team. It wasn’t that I was above them—we were equals,” Kvalheim recalled.

Discovering that her creative collaborators had a lot to say about the world, she was encouraged to continue the work, and it steadily gained momentum.

Now it’s a national network with a proper studio — but Kovalheim admits her reporters aren’t paid the same as their counterparts at other networks.

The station receives state funding and generates income from providing weekly programming to TV2, but funding is extremely tight.

Well done, the team is motivated by something other than money. In Norway, as in every country, people with learning disabilities face problems such as low employment rates, access to support and housing. Being able to understand the news allows the wider community to campaign on these issues.

Petter Bjørkmo’s recent report is a good example. He visited a woman with a more severe learning disability who was living in a shelter in Trondheim. “The city — the government — wants to take away her shopping,” he told me, which means her budget will be accompanied to the store by a support worker.

“They told her she had to go online. But she can’t! It’s hard for her to go online to buy groceries because she can’t speak very well. She needs help!

Kvalheim said Bjorkmo’s report received a “strong response” from viewers, although it did not lead local authorities to reconsider their stance.

“The TV BRA is very important,” agreed Svein Andre Hofsø, another journalist. “Because we’re talking about people with disabilities and what our rights are in real life.”

Hofso is an Oslo-based Action News reporter who was already a household name before joining TV BRA.

In 2013, he played the leading role in the movie “Detective Downs”. Ahead of the last parliamentary elections in 2021, Andrei had the opportunity to once again put on the detective’s fedora, but this time his job was to grill various politicians on their policies in his tongue-in-cheek way.

One shot shows him sitting on a bench outside Oslo’s parliament building, pretending to read a newspaper. Politician Jonas Gahr Støre – the leader of the Labor Party – is wandering outside, but behind a pillar a stooge is waiting to ambush him. As Hofthor watched, the Golem threw a butterfly net at the unsuspecting Stoll.

In the next scene, we see Støre sitting on a chair in the basement. Hofso shone an angled light in his face and showed him photos of disabled people looking sad and lonely. “What will you do for us if we vote for you?”

At this time, Stoll established his disability policy. After the election, he did become prime minister.

Camilla Kvalheim laughed as she recalled the encounter. “It was very funny. Every time we saw him from then on, he would say, ‘Oh – are you going to catch me in a butterfly net?

On the day I visited BRA TV, they were visited by local right-wing Progress Party MP Silje Hjemdal.

A team of four journalists asked her about everything from roads to immigration, as well as her thoughts on plans for Oslo’s lavish new National Theater (being from Bergen, she was somewhat skeptical of the project). Kvalheim was also present to guide the questions.

Heimdall’s answer was serious, but the encounter was also filled with warmth; she is a long-time supporter of the network.

TV BRA is not the only TV news station to be hosted by people with learning disabilities. Iceland and Denmark have similar programs, albeit on a smaller scale. Meanwhile, Slovenia, the Netherlands and several other countries offer “simple news” services – simplified reporting, but not provided by people with learning disabilities.

For viewers of BRA TV, such services are indispensable. “I think this station is very important to our community,” said Anne-Britt Ekerhovd, a fan who has a learning disability. “They explain things very well. In different news like NRK, their explanations are too difficult for us to understand. TV BRA is easier to understand.

Espen Giertsen, another fan of the network, agreed: “There’s something special about this – they’re making television in a new way.”

BRA TV journalists are well aware of the important role they play in serving this often overlooked audience.

“If they have something that weighs tons on them, I want them to be able to lift it so they can be free, so they can feel accepted,” Emily Ann Riddle said.

People Fix the World – Groundbreaking TV News Service

Norway’s TV BRA is a unique media organization. Their fortnightly national news program is hosted by journalists with learning disabilities or autism.

By interviewing politicians and other authority figures, the network aims to hold those in power to account, while also changing people’s perceptions of people with learning disabilities.

Our reporter William Kremer joined them at their gorgeous new studio in Bergen, where the journalists shared some of their best stories and told us their aspirations for the future.