“We’ve known each other too long, ladies and gentlemen.” This roguish remarkby Prime Minister Rutte towards the camera, because of a slyly looking at himSven Kockelmann at the end of an hour On 1 interview, was killing for thevalue of their conversation Monday night. Repeating rifle Rutte had kept upthe momentum, survived the cross-examination, distributed all aroundunderstanding and finally showed that he had never been afraid of the WNLjournalist. Viewers who watched consumer program earlier that evening _Radar_had watched, no doubt many questions still burned on their lips.
Because the editors of Radar (AvroTros) had been digging diligently again.And was together with the journalists of the investigative collective Followthe Money did the math: why does the Netherlands have the highest gas pricein Europe, what does the energy ceiling mean in practice and what can we doagainst all those cowboys on the free prairie of gas and electricity?
Sven Kockelmann and Mark Rutte
The conclusion you can draw, even after Radar -conversation with beloved MPsRenkse Leijten and Pieter Omtzigt: we seem to have passed the United States bynow, with our holy belief in the free market, the persistence of self-regulation despite all the derailments and the now bizarre fear of governmentintervention. Yes, but now there’s that energy ceiling, isn’t it? The measurewas dismissed by Leijten and Omtzigt as a rush job, which may cost us all morethan 15 billion, while it will not save many households and companies frombankruptcy. But it does fill the coffers of the energy companies.
How bad do we want it to be? Many of those energy companies immediatelyannounced a price increase on 1 October, which resulted in complaints from theNetherlands Authority for Consumers and Markets (ACM). The watchdog responded,but with a pitiful bark: as a customer you have to object to the rate increaseyourself, for which the ACM will provide a sample letter.
I imagined that the whole of the Netherlands nodded in agreement when Leijtenstated that the government should regulate the energy market.
Especially when you hear the stories of people who have really ended up in thedeepest darkness because they have been tempted to sign a contract with acompany like the Hollandse Energie Maatschappij (HEM), which seems to be runby real criminals. If the stories in this excellent broadcast of Radar aboutHEM’s working methods, such a company must immediately be taken off themarket. Rather a few sad crooks than all those distraught consumers.
Also VPROs Backlight Monday made us realize how important it is to havetenacious journalists, in a world where little people are so easily bulldozedand the truth so blatantly denied. It was a portrait of young hero ChristiaanTriebert, a Dutch investigative journalist who The New York Times kicked.And there his team has already won two Pulitzer Prizes for reconstructionprojects: on the basis of public sources such as satellite images and privateinternet films, they provide rock-solid proof of what really happens in warzones. _Trust me, I ‘m a journalist _is called the documentary. And believeme, he offers hope for the future of truth.
_Maaike Bos and Renate van der Bas write columns about television five times a