Presentator, Journalist
In the early 1990s, I was the creator, presenter, and editor-in-chief of the program De Afrekening (The Reckoning). Public figures who had fallen victim to distortions in the news or had been bruised and battered in other ways were given the opportunity, through carefully crafted reports, to settle the score with something that had troubled them deeply for a long time.
It was their response to reputational damage or myth-making—nothing more and nothing less than the old journalistic principle of the right to reply. The result was a broad and diverse palette.
For example, Dolf Brouwers (a.k.a. Sjef van Oekel) confronted the man who had essentially created him: television producer Wim T. Schippers. Former State Secretary René van der Linden, dismissed from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, looked back on the failure of his years in The Hague. National news anchor Fred Emmer took on the issue of his short stature. “Hey, little Emmer.” The seemingly unassailable Journaal presenter revealed that, because of his height, he was regularly met with aggression. “With ten more centimeters, my whole life would have been completely different.”
In hindsight, I suspect that I came up with the program out of a certain compassion for people who are damaged in the public domain.
It would not be out of place in today’s climate of prejudice and media frenzy surrounding individuals.
