Coen Verbraak has on Thursday evening Eve received the Sonja Barend Award for his interview with military Liesbeth Beukeboom in his program Srebrenica – the powerless mission of Dutchbat. Verbraak (55) received the prize from Barend himself.
Verbraak won the prize earlier in 2013 for his interview with former ABN CEO Rijkman Groenink. This time he is happier with the award than he was seven years ago, the journalist says. “That was more of an argument. I didn’t even think it was a very good conversation. Now I am perhaps more proud.”
For his program Verbraak spoke 25 years after the fall of Srebrenica with the people who experienced it at the time, called the ‘old Dutchbat soldiers’.
Verbraak, in the beautiful sentences we are used to from him, questions with compassion the wry details of the mission – and its aftermath in the people who were there, ‘the jury commented. “The image that emerges, indeed of a powerless mission, has never been brought into the limelight so clearly before a lot of viewers.”
Van Nieuwkerk, Ghosen and Jinek among other nominees
The other nominees were Antoinette Hertsenberg (for her Radarinterview with a Thuisbezorgd spokesperson), Tijs van den Brink (interview with Theo Maassen in Adieu God?), Hugo Logtenberg (conversation with Minister Sigrid Kaag in Buitenhof), Matthijs van Nieuwkerk (interview with resistance fighter Selma van de Perre in DWDD) and Adriaan van Dis (spoke with author Yuval Noah Harari Here is … Adriaan van Dis).
Danny Ghosen (interview with pedo activist Nelson in Danny on the Street), Jeroen Wollaars (conversation in News hour with virologist Marion Koopmans), Joris Linssen (who in Hello Goodbye speaks with a mother who sees her son again after years) and Eva Jinek (spoke in her talk show with Henk Krol) were in the nomination list.
The list of the ten nominees was compiled by a core jury consisting of Arjen Fortuin (TV critic NRC Handelsblad), Emma Curvers (de Volkskrant), Maaike Bos (TV reviewer Faithful) and Roy van Vilsteren (VARAguide). A broad jury of forty people from the media chose the winner.
Previous winners include Van Nieuwkerk (2009), Humberto Tan (2016) and Abbring (2017).
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