Don’t call it a birthday, reader Su-San Liem rightly wrote in a letter to the editor. “My association with birthday is the celebration of someone or something or reflecting on something you love after a (number of) years.” That does not fit with the reflection on the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, now a year ago.
Whatever the word is NRC reflected, like other media, extensively. In just over a week’s time, nearly fifty articles were published, such as a profile of Vladimir Putin, a reconstruction of the battle for an airport, many analyses, columns and opinion pieces. The Cultural Supplement and the book supplement produced themed pages, while regular reporting continued. On Friday a very nice overview of the past war year came online. Published since February 24, 2022 NRC more than 3,000 articles that featured “Ukraine” (sometimes casually). By way of comparison: in the twelve months before that there were five hundred. In addition to these ‘paper’ articles, there are countless contributions in live blogs.
So the war is omnipresent, or at least it was for the first two months, when each day a separate black bar on the front page of the paper newspaper tied together the Ukraine news. In January this year, the war made the front page four more times. Reporting has shifted from front reporting to broader stories, a reader noted last week. He regretted that NRC not, as during the war in Yugoslavia, has reporters permanently in the area.
That was decades ago now. Now correspondent Emilie van Outeren (from Poland), employee Floris Akkerman and editor Simone Peek, among others, regularly travel to Ukraine. “We can’t do everything we would like,” said Foreign Affairs chief Stéphane Alonso. “But on average, a reporter has been to Ukraine every month in the past year.” Close to the front, this often happens under the guidance of the Ukrainian army. “The army does not interfere with the journalistic content, but will not easily take you to a camp with Russian prisoners of war.” Reporting from a war zone is not only dangerous; an additional problem is that insurance costs have risen astronomically. Correspondent Eva Cukier (Moscow) also has to work under strict Russian censorship measures. In general, editor-in-chief René Moerland expects that, with the long duration of the war, topics such as Ukraine’s possible accession to the EU will become more prominent in the reporting.
In the meantime, readers report them with some regularity NRC accusing them of not reporting objectively on the war and of not paying attention to “the provoking role” that the West is said to have played. They suspect that the newspaper “has been pressured to articulate the government narrative and has degenerated into a follow-up paper”. Now is NRC not neutral in this war; not out of obedience, but out of principle. In the commentary NRC immediately after the invasion that Europe “cannot go on” with Vladimir Putin (February 25, 2022) and there were calls for an increase in arms deliveries.
Got to one point NRC precisely the reproach that it insufficiently supported Ukraine: that was in the spelling of, among other things, the capital, which is in NRC Kyiv continued to be called, while other media switched – or had already switched – to the Ukrainian spelling Kyiv. Used in most Ukrainian cities NRC the Ukrainian name for some time, but for a number of them the newspaper stuck to the common Dutch term: Kiev, Kharkov (instead of Kharkiv) and Odessa (instead of Odesa). Now ‘Kiev’ is the Russian name for the city, which made the choice of language politically sensitive. For example, columnist (and former editor) Hubert Smeets thinks that whoever writes ‘Kiev’ supports Putin’s statement in so many words that Ukraine has no right to exist. A number of editors agreed with him, also citing the fact that NRC is not neutral in the conflict. The editors-in-chief thinks it is a language issue and not a political issue and stuck to Kiev because it was now established. Even after de Volkskrant (in February) and The green (in the fall) switched to Kyiv. Writes according to the same reasoning NRC about Belarus and not about Belarus.
It led to a remarkable situation in the columns, because Smeets (and some others) stuck to Kyiv in their copy. The Opinion editors left that alone, arguing that the spelling was part of the view expressed in the text. The editors in turn objected to this, after which Kyiv was changed to Kiev in all copy from now on.
Until NRC this week, two days after the NIS, decided that Kyiv, Kharkiv and Odesa would be the norm from now on. (That morning an opinion article by Hubert Smeets had just come online in which all Kyivs had been converted into Kievs; with a view to publication in the Saturday newspaper, Kiev was now being transformed back into Kyiv). René Moerland emphasizes that the name change is not a political choice. “It’s about making it recognizable to our readers. They now know what is meant by Kyiv.” The decision of the NOS also played a role in this. It seems to me that the integration argument could have led to a change earlier – the political argument, by the way, too.
I would immediately change the designation of Belarus/Belarus. The editors-in-chief do not want to do that yet, although de Volkskrant, Fidelity, the NOS and the Dutch state all call that country Belarus. A newspaper doesn’t have to be in the leading group of the language change, but it also shouldn’t let the peloton disappear from view, peering at an old road map.
Arjen Fortune
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A version of this article also appeared in the newspaper of February 25, 2023