Malou Petter is doing her best to get rid of her News of the Day ‘stain’. She can’t stop talking about her departure from the right-wing news section. “What she is doing now is really going too far.”
It’s a bit sad how Malou Petter keeps talking about her departure from News of the Day in the media. She was on Eva Jinek’s talk show last week to talk about it in detail, while: who cares? That woman has been away for months, did not fit in with the show at all and has fled to EenVandaag. And no rooster crows about it.
Bashing Malou
However, six months later, Malou thinks she still has to start talking about everything. TV critic Victor Vlam has now discovered that she also talked about it as chairman of De Avond van de Goede Moed, some kind of inclusivity thing in Arnhem. “That was at the initiative of Mayor Marcouch,” he explains Victor Indicates TV.
Apparently Malou did not know about that meeting online would be posted, because here she is a lot less diplomatic about News of the Day. “If you’ve never heard of it: it really doesn’t matter. If you have heard of it, then you might know or understand why I quit after six months,” she sneers.
Underbelly
It’s bad-language TV, Malou thinks. “I decided to stop and I did so because I could no longer look at myself in the mirror. I did not want to work for a program that, in my opinion, pits people against each other, does not look for that connection, but rather excludes people based on gut instinct and a lot of prejudices.”
She didn’t want to be part of that. “Why am I telling you this now? Because I thought back so often to those conversations we had with each other here (at that Arnhem inclusivity party, ed.). (…) It made me think: what do you do? Do you allow it and let it all happen or do you draw a line somewhere and choose what you want to stand for?”
Applause
Malou receives thunderous applause and then Marcouch also praises her for that Talpa exit. Victor, also part of News of the Day, is shocked. “Wow. That’s a pretty strong statement. People are excluded based on their gut and prejudices? Well, my god, this is a very strong qualification.”
“I thought to myself: oh, this is really going too far, this is really a hard blow to the people with whom you made this program. In fact, you are saying to everyone who still works there: ‘You are participating in a program that pits people against each other. You are contributing to the downfall of the Netherlands.'”
Awkward
The media world is small, so this is very unwise according to Victor. “I can imagine that there are people who say: ‘The collaboration with Malou Petter? No, thank you, leave that alone, because she will kick you when she has left.’ That’s the name and reputation you get and that’s just really, really, really awkward.”
“It is really an insult to the viewer of that program. Imagine that you find News of the Day an interesting program and belong to the more right-wing voters, and hear the former presenter say this. It is an insult to those people. She actually says that their opinions and their views are based on gut and prejudices.”
Smear
It is also awkward that Malou positions herself so emphatically as anti-right, because she has now taken a job at EenVandaag and is expected to be neutral there.
Victor concludes: “This is a stain on her career at EenVandaag. I really find it incomprehensible that you say these kinds of things and I really don’t think it is possible.”
Wierd responds
Wierd Duk, the big star of News of the Day, finds Malou’s statements inappropriate. “That terrible seriousness too, as if she were the mother Mary of the journalistic nation. While she was sitting at the table with people with so much more journalistic experience at home and abroad,” he writes. X.
“‘Gut! Prejudices!’ That Malou, nice for the ex-colleagues. 😳”
