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News site slammed for Haakon divorce rumours

A Norwegian news site has been slammed for publishing rumours that Norway's Crown Prince Haakon is set to divorce his wife Mette-Marit.

News site slammed for Haakon divorce rumours
Prince Haakon and Princess Mette-Marit in 2010. Photo Sølve Sundsbø/The Royal Court of Norway
ABC Nyheter  reported on Thursday that Norwegians had started to ring the Royal Palace in panic after rumours of an impending divorce circulated on social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook. 
 
It based its story on a recording of a call to the palace posted onto YouTube by Katrine Angelica Østlyngen, a journalism student. 
 
“We are familiar with the rumour, and it’s just a rumour,” a palace official told her. “You are not the first to have called and asked about it. But it’s not true.” 
 
Kjersti Løken Stavrum, general secretary of the Norwegian Press Association, said that the website had broken the rules of good journalism. 
 
“I think that they ended up passing on rumours, because although they themselves are not responsible for the taping that they published, they haven’t really done any research themselves,” she told The Local.  “I think that in principle the established media shouldn’t pass on rumours. I don’t think that’s journalism. Journalism is fact-based reporting, based on sources that can be traced.” 
 
Tor Strand, ABC Nyheter’s editor, denied the charge. 
 
“We never print stories about rumours, but this is a story about people’s reaction to the rumours. For me that’s a big difference,” he told The Local.  “This is not a story about the content of the rumours, it’s a story about how Norwegian people got anxious because of the rumours.” 
 
He admitted that he had received angry emails and phone calls from editors on other newspapers on Friday and over the weekend. 
 
“It’s a tradition among Norwegian editors and journalists to not write about rumours whatsoever, and of course they don’t agree with me in publishing that story,” he said. “But the way I see it, our story is no different from the story you intend to write yourself.  We don’t sas what the rumours are all about — apart from the main conclusion that there is going to be a divorce.” 
 
Stavrum argued that the biggest problem with ABC Nyheter’s report was that stories about famous people’s relationships, like those about their sexual orientation, are difficult for the subjects to quash. 
 
“They’re the kind of rumour which are very hard to deny. For years there were rumours that Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg was gay.  It’s not easy to go out there and say ‘we are not going to divorce’, or say ‘I’m not gay’. I think they are quite similar.” 
 

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SEX

France taken to European Court over divorce ruling that woman had ‘marital duty’ to have sex with husband

A case has been brought against France at the European Court of Human Rights by a woman who lost a divorce case after judges ruled against her because she refused to have sex with her husband.

France taken to European Court over divorce ruling that woman had 'marital duty' to have sex with husband
Photo: Frederick Florin/AFP

The woman, who has not been named, has brought the case with the backing of two French feminist groups, arguing that the French court ruling contravened human rights legislation by “interference in private life” and “violation of physical integrity”.

It comes after a ruling in the Appeals Court in Versailles which pronounced a fault divorce in 2019 because of her refusal to have sex with her husband.

READ ALSO The divorce laws in France that foreigners need to be aware of

The court ruled that the facts of the case “established by the admission of the wife, constitute a serious and renewed violation of the duties and obligations of marriage making intolerable the maintenance of a shared life”.

Feminist groups Fondation des femmes (Women’s Foundation) and Collectif féministe contre le viol (Feminist Collective against Rape) have backed her appeal, deploring the fact that French justice “continues to impose the marital duty” and “thus denying the right of women to consent or not to sexual relations”.

“Marriage is not and should not be a sexual servitude,” the joint statement says, pointing out that in 47 percent of the 94,000 recorded rapes and attempted rapes per year, the aggressor is the spouse or ex-spouse of the victim.

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