“Cancel culture epidemic” • Tipped about buying sex on air – got kicked out on live air
Journalist Henrik Brandão Jönsson participated in the panel in the radio program Söndag in P4 to give listeners advice on various dilemmas. When a woman wondered what she should do to make her husband better in bed, Brandão Jönsson suggested that the man could practice his skills by buying sex in Denmark – something that is illegal in Sweden.
– He might go to Copenhagen and pay for sex, said Brandão Jönsson in the P4 program.
That made host Farah Adabi see red and asked him to leave the studio.
– I don’t think you can be on this panel anymore, it will be too difficult, I don’t think it’s okay to advise someone to go and buy sex in Denmark, she said on air.
In social media, Adabi has been praised for his actions. Equal opportunities minister Paulina Brandberg (L) also believes that her clear marking was good. “If you are silent, you take a stand for the normalization of this, if you speak out, you instead stand up for all those who are exploited in the sex industry. We need more people, like Abadi, to choose the latter option,” Brandberg wrote in a debate article in The Express.
“Cancel culture epidemic”
But the news panel in Nyhetsmorgon does not agree.
– Throwing out people who have weird opinions is not good. It would have been so incredibly easy to put him in the pot with a number of critical counterclaims, and then it would have become clear to everyone why his argumentation is so pathetic, says journalist and former SVT CEO Ulla Hamilton.
Panel colleague Sakine Madon, political scientist and political editor at the news magazine Fokus, agrees.
– What I find interesting is how those in power and politicians act in this type of situation, we have had a minister for equality who went out and gave support to the female presenter who kicked him out, she says and believes that the presenter should instead have met Brandão Jönsson and asked what he meant by his statement.
– This thing about throwing people out, this cancellation culture epidemic is completely… then it’s very interesting with all the politicians who constantly talk nicely about keeping an arm’s length distance from the media and public service and from the arts and such, but as soon as it’s something they themselves are passionate about, then they’re there poking and prodding and have opinions, says Sakine Madon.
Several reports against SR
Sweden’s radio has also been reported to the Review Board by several private individuals who believe that they acted wrongly by throwing Brandão Jönsson out. “You can hardly be considered impartial media when you throw out dissenting guests,” writes one of the thirteen people who reported to SR.
Brandão Jönsson himself has subsequently announced that he regrets his comment. – I want to apologize so terribly, he says to DN and believes that the words on the radio were a kind of provocation.