“Deeply, deeply shocked” one reader was by the fact that NRC alleged statements by informant Hans Wijers should have been corrected. That reporting was “careless, incomplete, not kept in check by adequate reporting.” checks and balances. Only focused on creating a fuss and scoring a scoop. Such motivations are unworthy of the NRCg.”
Last weekend too, dozens of messages ended up in the ombudsman’s office about “the Wijers debacle”. That left one reader “a bit of a sour taste in his mouth.” Another: “It’s good to see that your newspaper has put on the penitential. It’s a shame that the damage has already happened and people have also been damaged.”
The reason for the new responses was the far-reaching decision that the editorial staff took on Friday, November 28: the reporting on informant Wijers was corrected. For the careful creation of three articles that were published three days in a row from Thursday, November 13 NRC no longer vouch. Wijers and the readers were apologized. was that that rectification was in fact enforced. De Volkskrant had investigated in more detail what had happened around Wijers on election night.
The mailbox is often accused of NRC influenced the formation with “apparently unjustified reporting”, said a reader. He therefore asked the ombudsman “to once again shed light on this situation.” So here we go, based on some readers’ letters.
I wrote about the editorial process two weeks ago. My conclusion was that despite many mistakes, the most important articles were justified. That is no longer sustainable. That Hans Wijers would have called VVD leader Dilan Yesilgöz ‘a liar’ during a drink in Amsterdam on election night NRC from two sources, but de Volkskrant spoke to six who had not heard him say that but journalist Eric Smit, as it turned out in a reconstruction last Saturday.
Rebuttal
how was Wijers told that he would have said ‘liar’? In communication with Wijers and his spokesperson, the reporter had stated too emphatically that there had been “several people present” who had heard everything. Wijers had then sent a statement that was taken as confirmation, while he actually did not remember it well, like an hour later. With more peace and time, I would also have been able to conclude that the rebuttal had not gone well. Eric Smit’s statement that it was not Wijers but he who had called Yesilgöz a liar and given the fact that a film recording of the moment in question was missing, it was incorrect to draw the conclusion that the article was ‘justified’. I rightly concluded that the editors should have conducted a journalistic investigation into Smit’s statement, but the follow-up should have been that the substantiation of this part of the news report would have been too shaky in retrospect. Not fit to print so.
Many readers wonder how NRC is now looking at the publication of an app that Wijers had sent to media entrepreneur Willem Sijthoff – the subject of the second publication. He called the VVD leader a “shrew”. A reader emailed: “It is remarkably silent on this issue and it is a bad sign that this aspect has remained unmentioned. For the credibility of the newspaper, this aspect should also be discussed publicly. My position is: you should stay away from private email.”
The other readers who write about this are also adamant: this was private and therefore not publishable. An interesting topic to return to in a broader context. But here in short: it is not always forbidden for journalists to quote from , although a good balance must always be made between the public interest and the private interest. The decision was made too quickly here. The argument that Wijers had previously made very negative comments about Yesilgöz played an especially important role. But because the ‘liar statement’ disappeared, this argument fell away. That is why the editor-in-chief has added this correction to this message: “The facts described are correct, but the reason and the way in which we reported do not meet our journalistic standards.”
Editorial debates
The storm of criticism and the eventual correction hit the editors hard. This reader’s letter got to the heart of the matter: “After a long period of criticism from readers and interpreters of the reporting, a remarkable defense by the editors-in-chief and a (in retrospect) questionable assessment by yourself, it now appears that the NRC has not fulfilled a large part of its seven promises to the reader.”
Editor-in-chief Patricia Veldhuis referred to those promises when she addressed the editors on the work floor on Monday. “On our site we make seven promises to our audience: NRC is reliable, objective, liberal, factual, unfettered, transparent and responsible. That’s why we have to tighten the reins.” In two editorial debates, the mistakes made and lessons that need to be learned were discussed in detail. The editorial team is developing plans to strengthen the editorial process. Veldhuis says: “We are learning lessons from this and ensuring that this cannot happen again. We will inform the reader about this soon.” This week I thought it was a shame that after the correction it was decided not to publish any more readers’ letters about the issue. There were plenty of them.
NRC played a role in the cabinet formation that you do not want to play as a medium: Wijers left as an informant within a day due to incorrect reporting. He has accepted the editor-in-chief’s apology. The damage is great for the newspaper: “NRC has fallen from a pedestal in my opinion,” wrote a reader. “I will view investigative journalism with healthy suspicion in the future, something has broken.”
Time to work on restoring trust.
THE READER WRITES…Writer or writer
Three weeks ago, the “combative writer Yvonne Keuls”, as NRC described her in an obituary, died. Reader Frits Springveld emailed the editors about this. “When I turned on the TV this morning, I heard on the news that writer Yvonne Keuls had died. (…) Later that day I received an NRC necrology from her in my mailbox. In it, she had suddenly turned into a writer. I have seen Mrs. Keuls on TV more than once. She always spoke of herself as a writer. Yvonne Keuls had earned more respect from the NRC.” Would it have been better to use ‘writer’?
THE NEWSPAPER RESPONDS…Both good
The rule stated in our style book, says editor-in-chief Ward op den Brouw, is that when mentioning professional names and positions, we do not unnecessarily draw attention to the fact that someone is a woman. But calling an actress an actor and a singer a singer would be ridiculous. In some professions the boundary is less clear: is a female poet a ‘poet’ or a ‘poet’? This category also includes writer/writer; both may be used. It is nice to be consistent in one article, so not to use both forms interchangeably. If an editor is unsure how to describe a woman in a particular position, . In this case there was no doubt in the mind of the author of Yvonne Keuls’ obituary. Toef Jaeger: “‘Writer’ is a profession that can be fulfilled equally well by a man or a woman, and there is no added value in being able to read the coincidental gender of the creator from the word. Yvonne Keuls did not call herself a writer for polemical reasons. The fact that she is called a writer in this obituary is also not for polemical reasons. Times, words and meanings change.”
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