Female news anchor suspended for calling colleague ‘handsome’ on live TV

The Ministry of Information in Kuwait has suspended a female news anchor for calling a male colleague ‘handsome’ on live TV.

The journalist, Basima al-Shammar, who works for Kuwait TV, was covering Kuwait’s municipal election last weekend when she made the mistake of jokingly complementing a male correspondent live on air.

In a video that has since gone viral, Al-Shammar can be heard telling her male colleague, who didn’t know he was already on live TV and was still adjusting his traditional headgear, that he didn’t need to fix his looks because he was already handsome.

In the Western world, this would have passed as a simple compliment, but in Kuwait, it was perceived as flirtation on the female anchor’s side.

Even after hearing her explanation, the Ministry of Information suspended the female news anchor and launched an investigation to establish whether she was flirting.