Yvonne Coldeweijer filed an official complaint against BNR Nieuwsradio and Talitha Muusse with the Council of Journalism. The radio station appears to have messed with the ‘sniff film’.
Talitha Muusse, in collaboration with her employer BNR Nieuwsradio, has recorded a video in which she pretends to sniff cocaine in the ladies toilet. They sent that anonymously to Yvonne Coldeweijer, in the hope that she would immediately post it on her juice channel and they could immediately shame her way of working.
Yvonne in the trap
It just didn’t exactly go as Talitha and BNR had hoped. For example, Yvonne behaved politely to begin with. Hey, but that wasn’t the plan was it? Talitha blocked Yvonne as quickly as possible, making further adversarial impossible. A bad thing, according to media journalist Mark Koster.
In the end, Yvonne did publish the video, but then the next setback came for Talitha and BNR: she did not do that on her juice channel with half a million followers, but only in her paid group chat with three thousand members. So it made little difference. Even worse? Yvonne took three blows in her comment.
Messing around with snuff video
BNR and Talitha nevertheless turned it into a whole media circus. They shouted that Yvonne just indiscriminately throws something online without checking it properly and the mainstream media jumped on it like hyenas. What does it show? All those media are a little bit misled by BNR and Talitha. There has been quite a bit of messing around with that snuff film.
It is quite likely that Talitha was sniffing on the images that Yvonne has published, but the vast majority of people have only seen the images that BNR subsequently distributed itself. And on that, it’s a lot less likely that Talitha was actually sniffing.
Questionable mounting
Probability plays an important role in the lawful publication of these kinds of films, so in retrospect it is not at all good for BNR and Talitha that she did make very obvious sniffing movements. To the outside world, and therefore to other media, they have therefore distributed an edited version of the film.
Yvonne is stunned and compares to her juice channel the original video with the edited video. “Omg I found out that BNR screwed me in twice. Talith is everywhere proclaiming that you do not see anything in the video. I thought it was weird! You can really see that she is sniffing in the video.”
‘This is outrageous’
Talitha shouts everywhere that she was just messing around with her keys on the video, but nothing could be further from the truth. “I went to compare….. What do you think? I received a different video from BNR than they broadcast. THEY CUT THE SNAP PART FROM THEIR VIDEO!”, says Yvonne.
She directly addresses Talitha and BNR editor-in-chief Mireille van Ark. “Why did you cut the snuff part from the video? Why did I receive a different video than the one published to the outside world?
This is really outrageous.”
Official complaint
Yvonne states that there is unethical journalism on four counts and that is why she is submitting an official complaint to the Council of Journalism. Not only against BNR, but also against Talitha herself.
BNR boss Mireille does not want to answer the question of whether another video has indeed been sent to Yvonne. About the complaint she says she will file, Mireille says: “She is free to go to the Council for Journalism.”
The four things Yvonne is angry about:
