Reverend Gremdaat, the alter ego of TV maker Paul Haenen, believes that the talk shows Jinek and Op1 played a bad role in Johan Derksen’s disappearance from the tube.
There are more and more sounds that the media riot around Johan Derksen last week was perhaps a little too intense. According to TV expert Victor Vlam, the talk shows Jinek and Op1 played a dubious role in the disappearance of Today Inside, and Dominee Gremdaat agrees.
media hysteria
Reverend Gremdaat, the alter ego of Paul Haenen, thinks that Today Inside has disappeared from the tube because of massive media hysteria. “You have people who only watch a TV program because they feel like being outraged: ‘Well, what you’re seeing now, you can’t do that at all! How reprehensible is this!!!’”
That was the case in the past, he explains. “You had people who only watched a satirical program because they wanted to get excited. Mies Bouwman, the queen of Dutch television, participated in the satirical program Zo Is Het Coincidentally Also Once Again, and she was then threatened with death.”
From Op1 to Jinek
At that time, the indignation was only stimulated by De Telegraaf, Paul believes. “And now almost through all the newspapers and almost all talk shows. It is not the social media that are fueling the outrage, but the regular TV programs and the regular newspapers. From de Volkskrant to Algemeen Dagblad, from Op1 to Jinek.”
According to him, talk shows such as Op1 and Jinek are out for sensation. “Meaning to be outraged! Want to turn a mosquito into an elephant! Sensational sense! The problem is not Johan Derksen, but the figures and the media who feel like an extreme magnification, who feel like war, who feel like misunderstanding.”
Sausage
According to Paul, there are also enough people ‘who feel like getting hurt’. “And then they look for a reason. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, a lot of people wanted to get outraged last week, but the majority in the Netherlands will be all over it.”
Maybe we should learn how to turn an elephant into a mosquito, he says. “Just calm down, no oil on the fire for a while, put the old-fashioned perspective into perspective or, as we used to say when someone came up with an extreme story: ‘Yes, do you believe it yourself?’”
