You are a celebrated TV interviewer, you are thrown into the gutter by Angela de Jong: these are turbulent times for Nieuwsuur presenter Mariëlle Tweebeeke. “Gone reputation!”
Pieter Omtzigt has already provided a few very much-discussed TV moments in the run-up to the elections. In addition to dissing a D66 lady in the talk show Op1, he also punched Nieuwsuur presenter Mariëlle Tweebeeke on the nose. Omtzigt took over the interview with her completely and she was left stuttering and stammering.
Bullying
That Mariëlle Tweebeeke can pack, says Angela de Jong now. The AD chief diva always praised the presenter for the ‘great interviews’ during the election campaign two years ago. “Tough as nails, but fair.”
They were doing quite well again at Nieuwsuur, Angela continues, but, as she writes A.D: “In the conversation with Omtzigt, Mariëlle Tweebeeke was too eager to score, too eager to outdo Saint Peter. And that is not appropriate for a section like Nieuwsuur. But if you really want to do it, make sure you have the facts in order.”
‘Gone reputation’
Unfortunately, Mariëlle did not have that, according to Angela. “One perfectly timed ‘excuse me?’ van Omtzigt, one simple objection and Tweebeeke was stammering and stuttering like the first novice. Reputation gone. And then you still have a week and a half to go.”
So, Angela throws the whole Mariëlle in the garbage in one go. Not a bit rigorous? In any case, the criticism of the presenter is widely shared. This is what Alex Mazereeuw, the TV critic of the Volkskrantthat Mariëlle was renamed by Omtzigt ‘as a powerless manager of her own car wash’.
final blow
NRC’s TV critic Rinskje Koelewijn also thinks that Mariëlle has suffered damage. “The point was not that Tweebeeke did not respond,” she writes column.
She continues: “The point was that Omtzigt did not give up the floor with his repeated ‘but Mrs Tweebeeke…’ and dealt the final blow when he raised the ‘exception article in the Accounts Act’ in the last seconds.”
Mediocre scores
Mariëlle and her colleagues from Nieuwsuur are scoring poorly during these elections, according to ratings expert Tina Nijkamp. “How does it score? Very mediocre. Below average for Nieuwsuur. And does it say something about the popularity of those party leaders?”
Tina continues that Omtzigt is in the lead. His Nieuwsuur interview is the most watched party leader interview to date, with 494 thousand viewers. This is followed by Joost Eerdmans (415 thousand). Least viewed? The one with Henri Bontenbal, the newcomer from the CDA (304 thousand).