It started with a glance. At first, the man felt honoured that a Minister – and a woman he has always liked – and yes, in that way, too – would be interested in him. During that evening one glance turned into many. And when he spilled a little red wine on his white shirt and went up to his hotel room to change, he suddenly found Trine standing right behind him. She asked if he wouldn’t rather change in her room instead, and the rest, he wrote, people could work out for themselves.
Afterwards, when she had practically shoved him out of the door, he had felt used. And when he contacted the Minister a couple of weeks later to get her to admit that she had crossed a line, he was coldly dismissed with ‘Plenty of men would count themselves lucky to have been in your shoes.’
VG has twelve pages about Trine, Dagbladet has nine. Aftenposten devotes practically its entire front page and four pages inside the newspaper to the alleged assault and there are reactions and commentaries about them in addition to a series of pictures of Trine. The sexiest and most seductive photographs have been dug out and reproduced. Newspapers carry editorials that demand that Juul-Osmundsen either resign as soon as possible or come up with an explanation, ‘and a good one at that’. No one can understand why she hasn’t yet resigned and they mock her for apparently running away from the Ministry of Justice yesterday to escape the media.
Several newspapers have visited Hotel Caledonien, they have discovered which room was registered in Trine’s name on the night in question, and they have – as usual – photographed the door. ‘It happened behind this door,’ reads the caption. The media have contacted every single member of the Labour Party’s youth branch who was present that night to ask if they know the identity of the victim. No one does. But the media keep speculating. They have also spoken to other party members who were there, but no one remembers seeing Trine during the dinner. A revelation that causes several media commentators to conclude that ‘she probably had other things on her mind’.
When Henning gets to the offices of 123news, he realises that Trine won’t be able to ride out this storm. Too much negative publicity about her has appeared in the wake of the initial story. She is accused of having doctored a working environment survey in the Justice Department because it made her look bad. Sacked a member of staff, apparently for no reason. Failed to produce receipts for her travelling expenses. Accepted gifts without declaring them or paying tax on them. During an official trip to India, her Indian counterpart presented her with a rug, which she brought back and put in one of the guest bedrooms in her house in Ullern. Last Christmas she was given a 3.5-litre bottle of whisky by the Parliament’s Press Association, which she failed to declare.
The press has also resurrected a story from two years ago when she travelled to the US and flew business class, even though economy class tickets were available on the same flight. Travelling too often and too expensively never enhances a politician’s popularity. And what about that cookery course she was given by the famous Norwegian chef and food writer, Arne Brimi?
The house, which Trine and her husband bought for 17.8 million kroner last year, becomes a story in itself. Several papers have included photo montages and added catty captions to the effect that Labour politicians don’t usually live in mansions. A quote from an unnamed Labour Party politician helps to pour petrol on the flames: ‘How many of us can afford to live like this? And I’ve heard she has a cleaner as well.’ And a chalet in the Hafjell ski resort with four, possibly even five bedrooms? Shame on you. Nor does it help Trine’s case that her husband drives a Porsche Cayenne, a hugely polluting car. And since when is it appropriate for a Minister to wear such short skirts or be allowed to borrow jewellery for free for three months at a time from one of Oslo’s most prestigious jewellers?
Opposition politicians also make sure to stick the knife in with a ‘what she promised but failed to deliver’ list. Anything she has done in the last three years that can be interpreted even remotely as a failure is dumped in a box labelled ‘character assassination’. And more is to come. The fact that she doesn’t get on very well with the head of Norway’s police force gives especially the Conservative section of the opposition yet another reason to demand that the Minister be replaced at the earliest opportunity. If the opposition hadn’t already lost confidence in her over the Hotel Caledonien scandal, then they certainly will now. In an opinion poll on the front page of 123news, 97 per cent of readers demand that Trine resign immediately, 2 per cent disagree, while 1 per cent ‘don’t know’. These figures are practically identical in every other publication that Henning checked before he went to work.
Instead of sitting down at his computer, he walks over to the national news desk where he finds the fax that was sent to them along with every other newspaper late last night and locates Kåre Hjeltland. The news editor’s gaze is focused on a PC screen a few workstations away. His hair stands straight up as usual and he looks as if he slept at the office and hasn’t had time to shower before new stories appeared and demanded his undivided attention.
‘Do you have two minutes, Kåre?’ Henning says and stops in front of him. Hjeltland registers Henning’s arrival, nods, bashes the keyboard hard for thirty seconds before he gets up so abruptly that his chair rolls several metres backwards.
‘What is it?’ he asks.
Henning waits until Hjeltland’s eyes stop flitting.
‘You know it’s a stitch-up, don’t you?’
Hjeltland folds his arms across his chest and looks at him for a few seconds.
‘The whole case against Trine bears all the hallmarks,’ Henning continues. ‘Ever since yesterday morning VG has been drip-feeding stories to its readers, stories it couldn’t possibly have written in just one day. It must have known about this for a while and planned it carefully.’
Hjeltland gives Henning a baffled look.
‘Yes, and so what?’
‘So what? Don’t you think it’s just a little bit suspicious?’
‘No, not at all. We would have done exactly the same if a big story like this had landed in our lap.’
‘It doesn’t worry you that the story was deliberately leaked to Norway’s biggest newspaper, and that Trine wasn’t even offered the opportunity to respond to the allegations before the first articles went to print?’
Hjeltland is about to say something, but Henning has no intention of letting him get a word in yet.
‘And don’t tell me that VG didn’t try because that’s bullshit. It’s had every opportunity to confront Trine before it started this smear campaign against her, precisely because it’s known about it for a long time. It’s obvious what VG wants. And the rest of the media will blindly follow its lead while doing everything they can to come up with their own take on the story.’
‘But—’
‘I haven’t seen a single article that tries to defend Trine or examines the story from her point of view. No, that’s not true, I saw a two-liner saying one of her Junior Ministers is one hundred per cent behind his boss. No one has yet managed to establish what exactly happened in that hotel room.’
‘But she’s refusing to say anything,’ Hjeltland protests. ‘What do you want us to do, Henning? Not cover the story?’
‘No, but it has got completely out of hand. Trine might well be guilty of the things she’s accused of, but that’s exactly why it would have been refreshing to see a newspaper or a TV channel take a step backwards and assess the story from a balanced point of view. Or at least acknowledge that there could be more to it.’