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In the 1990s, Willibrord Frequin chased pedophiles with a camera, which was broadcast on RTL 4 and SBS6 respectively. Decent media people, usually working for the public broadcaster, spoke of such journalism as a shame. Nowadays everything seems different, so this week Nieuwsuur focused its unpainted lens on Ukrainian men who are in a Dutch shelter, but actually belong in the trench.
“When they see the camera, they duck away,” the voice of reporter Jan Eikelboom sounds under images of boys disappearing from their balcony in shock. “In the Ukraine shelter in Huizen, not all men have an exemption to leave the country,” continues the brave Eikelboom from his voice-over speaking booth at the Hilversum Media Park. After mounting reporting he will join us for lunch in the NOS canteen with a tray in his hands.
The Nieuwsuur report was absurdly one-sided. Angry women behind a table in the same shelter formed a common thread. Their men fought at the front, they could hardly stomach the fact that guys of the same age were hanging out on the balcony. From the perspective of such women, this is understandable. But as a news organization you can wonder whether something so private should be published under the headline ‘Ukrainian conscript men cause inconvenience’.
Apart from the fact that it is quite NSB-like – I use the term reluctantly – to film people who hide so as not to serve as cannon fodder, there are other perspectives to be given, for example from human rights organizations. Or a poet who argues that men who resist social pressure are the real heroes. If everyone dared to do this, there would be no war. Eikelboom and his colleagues did not have such speakers in mind.
How would Willibrord Frequin, who died last year, have behaved during this war? Well, he was wrong in peacetime, but this actually means nothing.
2023-09-25 19:25:42
#Nieuwsuur #films #loose #cannon #fodder #evades #war #Ukraine #Joop #BNNVARA
