Former Norway environment and international development minister Erik Solheim weighed in on the controversy involving Norwegian journalist Helle Lyng, saying her questioning of Prime Minister Narendra
Modi reflected “limited knowledge” and a lack of factual grounding. Speaking to CNN-News18, Erik Solheim dismissed the incident as an overblown controversy driven by what he described as selective and misleading narratives about India’s press freedom rankings.
“I think it is just an incident of an immature journalist who has, so to say, a very limited knowledge and understanding of India and is running by some headlines that she has been able to get,” Erik Solheim said. He specifically pushed back against global rankings that place India lower on press freedom indices.
Read more: Who Is Helle Lyng? Norwegian Journalist Who Questioned PM Modi At Oslo Joint Presser
“For example: these kinds of statistics that try to show that India is very low on press freedom and is very low on democracy. Some of these put Saudi Arabia, Pakistan or even Palestine ahead of India and claim that there are a lot of murders of journalists in India but all of this goes completely against common sense and as a journalist everyone should check their facts and then report things,” he added.
Calling the episode a “minor incident,” Erik Solheim said it could have been easily avoided and urged journalists to exercise greater scrutiny before drawing conclusions based on international rankings or headlines.
The controversy erupted after Helle Lyng, a journalist with Oslo-based newspaper Dagsavisen, attempted to question PM Modi during a joint press interaction with Norway’s prime minister.
“Why don’t you take some questions from the freest press in the world?” Helle Lyng called out as the Prime Minister was exiting the venue. The brief exchange was not acknowledged publicly, but video footage of the moment quickly went viral. Helle Lyng later defended her remarks on social media platform X (formerly Twitter), citing Norway’s top ranking in the World Press Freedom Index and pointing out that India is ranked significantly lower.
