Jack van Gelder arouses annoyance with his return to television. The presenter says that he has never noticed a toxic working atmosphere at NOS Sport. “Yes, that is precisely the problem!”
After a short absence, Jack van Gelder returned last night as a regular guest in the talk show HLF8. He was absent for a week because of the revelations of de Volkskrant about his misconduct at NOS Sport. He consistently called a female colleague ‘her’ and asked Aïcha Marghadi if she would join him in the bath.
Jack is back
Why was Jack off the screen for a while? “Because last week, after the Volkskrant published all kinds of articles in which I also appeared, I had something like: rest on the spot. It took me a while to process it all. I’m just sitting there. I was there every Monday and I like being there again,” he says in HLF8.
Jack doesn’t want to say much more about it. “I have said here exactly how I felt about the affair and what happened and what didn’t happen. That is it. And further: done, over, out, as far as I’m concerned.”
Toxic atmosphere
And about that toxic work culture at NOS Sport? Jack never noticed. “Not at all. Like I said, I never made it to the editorial office. I did my programs and we sat in a separate corner. I was never in the editorial office and I didn’t even have my own desk. I really never noticed anything, but I understand that a lot has happened.”
It’s all the editors fault, says Jack. “If the editors had ever intervened properly and delved into those incidents and taken people’s complaints seriously, we wouldn’t have had to talk about them here at all. That is the reality.”
‘This is the problem’
That Jack “never noticed” is precisely the problem, say critics. Reply to Jan NU.nl: “It is typical that Van Gelder does not recognize the toxic working atmosphere, while he himself admits that he has abused a colleague. He also ensured that that employee could not come to the European Championships.”
He continues: “Van Gelder is clearly on the distributing side and not on the receiving side and was therefore able to close his eyes to what was happening around him.”
Carjillo agrees: “It’s like racism, if you don’t think it’s there, you’re probably part of the problem.”
Hand in your own bosom
According to viewers, it is also easy that Jack blames the editors-in-chief of NOS Sport. For example, RTL program maker Thijs Zeeman tweets sarcastically: “Jack doesn’t seem to have noticed the toxic atmosphere on his Twitter account either. “If Twitter’s management had intervened sooner, it would not have happened.”
Marc thinks that Jack should put his hand in his own bosom. “No, Jack, if you and your colleagues had acted respectfully, we wouldn’t have to talk about this!”
HLF8 host Hélène Hendriks did not question Jack critically as expected. Ad: “She also seizes every moment to say that no cross-border has taken place.”