Ombudsmen are useful figures in journalism – that’s a shame de Volkskrant it has stopped. That does not mean that I always agree with the judgment of these men.
For example, I have great difficulty with a recent judgment by the newspaper’s ombudsman Fidelity, Edwin Kreulen. As a reader of that newspaper, I fervently hope that the editors, and also editors of other newspapers, will not care one bit about this specific judgment. The starting point for Kreulen was a well-known hobbyhorse of Rob Wijnberg, editor-in-chief of The Correspondent. In an interview in Fidelity Wijnberg had said: “The irony is that major news media, with their distrust, are the perfect breeding ground for the lying populism that they fight against every day. It is the perpetual motion machine of suspicion.”
“What is now making headlines,” says Wijnberg, “is firstly not the normal, but the abnormal, and secondly: by emphasizing it as normal ‘news’, you give the impression that it is the norm.” What is allowed to make the front page at Wijnberg, I wonder. Suppose Putin declares (nuclear) war on the rest of the world, minus China, is that not allowed on the front page because it is not a normal, but an abnormal development? Should we save that nuclear war for the back page, just above Abrahams’ column, who also likes to write about abnormal matters?
Wijnberg therefore believes that the major media are being too suspicious and are thus playing into the hands of the already suspicious populists. Personally, I would like the media to be even more suspicious, especially towards those suspicious populists. To limit myself to a famous example: if the WashingtonPost had not reported so consistently suspiciously about Richard Nixon at the time, he would have remained as a failing president for a while. It is not the major news media that are the perfect breeding ground for lying populism, but the media that are too cowardly or too naive to unmask that populism. And it is precisely the powerful of this earth who unintentionally demonstrate again and again that they wholeheartedly deserve our distrust.
Wijnberg is entitled to his views, even if they are misconceptions, but it becomes painful as the ombudsman Fidelity uncritically supports it. Ombudsman Kreulen did this last week when he called Wijnberg’s analysis “very striking” and opposed his honest editing with the appeal: “And also smoothens Fidelity not the path for populism, unintentionally, relying on a journalistic approach? Let the editors take Wijnberg’s words to heart.”
Irony wanted that Fidelity had an interesting scoop that day. Investigative journalist Matthijs van Dam showed how the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, led by Minister Wopke Hoekstra, tried to prevent open criticism of Qatar, the host country of the Football World Cup. His officials excluded the risks for LGBTI people in Qatar from a letter to Parliament about the human rights situation there, and ensured that Sports Minister Conny Helder did not wear a One Love bracelet in the stands, but a virtually invisible pin.
In short, a “very striking” scoop.
A version of this article also appeared in the October 4, 2023 newspaper.