The van Nieuwkerk affair shows that public broadcasting has drifted away fromits proper task: to monitor the quality of the public debate and to contributeto a healthy society.
Peter ClockNovember 27, 202219:23
The public broadcaster is going to subject itself to an in-depth self-examination. This will not be limited to the abuses in TV programs DWDD butalso look for the ‘systemic causes’ in the broadcasting system, which underliethe misconduct of the presenter and editors-in-chief.
That is a wise decision, because Matthijs van Nieuwkerk’s behavior is not anisolated incident, but a symptom of a public broadcaster gone mad that wantedto keep a viewer rating gun coûte que coûte and had no eye for the damage hecaused to others and himself.
It is also a symptom of labor relations that imply a great imbalance of power.The editors of DWDD like the editors of many other programs, had temporarycontracts. They could be fired at any time. Resigning themselves was difficultbecause they had to pay a fine. So they often had no choice but to blindlyobey.
The fact that a broadcaster that emerged from the labor movement, BNNVara,felt compelled to do so and failed to properly protect employees who fell preyto a burnout, shows how far the public broadcaster has drifted from itsoriginal values.
The transformation that public service broadcasting has undergone over thepast decade has further exacerbated the situation. The power of the individualbroadcasters was limited, that of the umbrella organization NPO grew. Programmakers were increasingly at the mercy of network managers, who determined onbehalf of the NPO who was allowed to show their skills at what time. Sincethen, a program can be taken off the tube from one moment to the next.
Due to the simultaneous emphasis on ratings, public broadcasting fell prey tothe process already described in 1985 by Neil Postman in Amusing ourselves todeath. When the amount of attention becomes the benchmark in determiningsuccess and allocating airtime, everything ends up as entertainment. Thismechanism has hit hard especially with the talk shows. Instead of striving toinform the viewer as best as possible, the viewer was mainly to beentertained. Therefore, rather a Sywert van Lienden or a Prem Radhakishun thansomeone with knowledge of business who is less good at his words and istherefore less entertaining.
The personification of this development is Frans Klein, video director of theNPO, and Matthijs van Nieuwkerk’s most important patron until the last moment.He believes in a broad public service broadcaster, which must first of allattract many viewers and only secondly think about its public task, to monitorthe quality of the social debate and to contribute to a healthy society.
Klein has gained more and more power in recent years. His latest achievementis to shut down the NPO Fund, which finances high-quality drama productionsand documentaries. From now on, those proposals must first pass Klein and hisfaithful.
The centralization of power has been good for ratings. Under the leadership ofKlein cs, the NPO has provisionally defeated the commercial broadcasters. Theprice paid for this is a slavish broadcasting culture, in which everyone hasto dance to the tune of the broadcasting bosses, and a more superficial andless surprising program offering, in which the same TV personalities areconstantly put forward. The most recent example: the innovative book programme_Moped at Sea_ must make way for Eus ‘ Book Club.
To beat the commercial broadcasters, the public broadcaster has become moreand more like a commercial broadcaster. It is high time to take the publictask more seriously again, in its program offerings, but especially in itscorporate culture.