NRK Brennpunkt’s extensive contact with the people who procured Psy-Group is frightening, especially because the questions BCC has received are eerily similar to allegations made in the influence operation. Now several incorrect allegations have been retracted; the 19 original questions from NRK are reduced to 10.
By Anne Lea K. Nielsen
BCC has worked extensively to get the facts out to our cooperating partners and the media, because the influence operation has spread distorted information on a large scale over several years.
“It is serious if NRK Brennpunkt is repeating the claims created via the operation, because they have great power to define reality. We cannot accept our leaders and members being criminalized and stigmatized. It is unfair, and harmful to our faith community,” says Berit Hustad Nilsen.
Why is it so formidable to clean up? Can’t you just document what the facts are?
“It is obvious that a story about alleged economic pressure is made stronger when you get the impression that money has simultaneously ended up in leaders’ pockets. NRK Brennpunkt has now done everything they can to make this story stick. Accounts clearly prove this is not the case, so we have referred them to more qualified documentation than Jonathan van der Linden’s email inbox,” says Hustad Nilsen.
READ: BCC’s morals and ethics: problems or solutions?
She also reacts to NRK Brennpunkt asking Ben van Wijhe – whom Psy-Group refers to as its client – for help from his network to counter her information.
“That NRK Brennpunkt – after receiving factual information from us – runs straight to these shady sources and asks for help to counteract our information, leads me to question its ethics. But there will likely be others who evaluate this process after the program is broadcast.”
BCC also requested an answer to whether allegations removed from NRK’s list of questions have been officially withdrawn. NRK will not answer this question, leaving it unresolved.
First round of questions
On September 1, 2020, BCC received 19 questions from NRK Brennpunkt. At the time there had been an ongoing dialogue between NRK and BCC for one year. It turned out that many of the allegations contained serious errors and in fact bore a stronger resemblance to Psy-Group’s alternative reality than BCC’s true really.
For example, NRK claimed it could document that local churches savings have disappeared, which BCC could easily refute with full force.
READ: Where are the savings from the local churches?
Three rounds of questions
After many rounds of dialogue and meetings with NRK, BCC has now answered the third version of the questions on video, which in the end were reduced to 10 out of the original 19 NRK sent in the first round.
When claims of financial mismanagement in BCC’s were refuted, others were then made, such as BCC’s morals and ethics are negative, claims of social control, and lack of freedom of speech.
Members have reacted strongly to the charged tone of NRK’s allegations, and not least to its unwillingness to ask BCC’s members themselves what they think about these.
READ: Declined to survey BCC members about its allegations
Download the three versions of NRK’s questions here (Norwegian only):
