It still bothers Winston Gerschtanowitz how critically Eva Jinek questioned him three years ago in her talk show on RTL 4. “At the time, she also thought that you scored with bad news.”
It was big in the news three years ago: Winston Gerschtanowitz’s alleged tree scam. The TV star was caught by Quote in a shady construction behind the new charity he had launched: EarthToday. He promised to plant trees all over the world, but it turned out to be mainly a money machine.
Out of the field
Immediately after the commotion, Winston sat at Eva Jinek’s table, where he denied being some kind of Sywert van Lienden, but the presenter did not seem really convinced and took him seriously. Meanwhile, Johan Derksen called him a ‘pseudo-swindler’ and Youp van ‘t Hek described him as a ‘money-grabbing philanthropist’.
It was a horrible time, Winston now looks back in the podcast Go-getters. “I was really taken aback by it. Your integrity is simply affected.”
Awkward
Winston’s charity was indeed just a commercial company, he admits. “Deliberately too, because we knew that all regulations surrounding charities have a very restrictive effect. (…) We said: let us act as if we were a good cause in everything we do with consumers.”
He continues: “However, we have not thought enough about those different worlds: the consumer side and the corporate side of investors. We should have been more transparent about this up front and we just didn’t think it through.”
Very painful
If he hadn’t been a celebrity, no one would have tripped over it, Winston thinks. “No, absolutely not. That is something I also find very bad. (…) I think my fame contributed enormously to breaking it down, yes. That is also very painful for me and for all the people who work there.”
He feels destroyed by the media. “It was also a time when looking for the storm was the trend of the moment. Maybe you can still remember that. Everyone looked for bad news, because bad news scored, whether it was true or not.”
Toned down
Um, do we remember those days? This wasn’t even three years ago? “Yes, but I think it has been watered down a bit. At a certain point people were a bit tired of bad news.”
Anyway: Eva Jinek was also in that group at the time vibesaid Winston. “When the news came out, I went to sit with Jinek the next day. By the way, she wasn’t really ehh… She was friendly, but at that moment she also thought that bad news was the tone of voice that she scored with, which turned out not to be the case anymore based on the figures.”
Ugly shit
Oops, that’s an ugly sneer from Winston at the moderately viewed talk show that Eva made at RTL 4. In any case, Winston continues: “I thought it was important to sit down right away, because ducking away is really not for me.”
“Eventually it just faded away and more people understood that it was just a communication error.”