Lindberg had been making documentaries and worked as a journalist, author and photographer until 1988, when he gave an official report to the Norwegian Ministry of Fisheries and Coastal Affairs about what he believed to be illegal conditions in the seal hunt.
The report was published in full on 20 July 1988 in the newspaper Bladet Tromsø, even though the Norwegian Ministry of Fisheries and Coastal Affairs had kept it from the public.
[2] The "Lindberg case" questioned the freedom of speech in Norway, and particularly its position regarding privacy, in this case the privacy of the seal hunters who had participated in what at the time was internationally largely regarded as inhumane and brutal slaughtering of seal pups (whitecoats) with hakapik.
The documentary, Seal Mourning, had its premiere on the Norwegian television station NRK on 9 February 1989, when the channel showed clips from the film.
Dokument2's editor Gerard Helskog argued that the public had a right to know what happened on the hunting grounds, and won completely in Bergen City Court.