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How a corona film casts NRC in a bad light with cutting and pasting

What do we get now? Can’t count on that ombudsman? Or is the newspaper already disinforming about corona? In this column, a subscriber commented last week that if WHO CEO Hans Kluge was right that a corona death occurs every 17 seconds in Europe, which would amount to 536 million deaths in a year. That couldn’t be right?

Fifteen readers reprimanded me, under encouraging headlines like “how stupid can we get,” that this is of course a math error: the reader mistakenly counted on 17 deaths per second, instead of one death every 17 seconds; in the latter case, which is what Kluge said, you get 1,855,059 deaths in a year – which is far less inconceivable. Incidentally, Kluge’s own calculation was also criticized.

Not a math miracle myself, I had failed to make the sum, so MEA culpa. It is encouraging in the meantime that NRC readers are closely following the figures in their newspaper up to this column. So not a new one this week for punishment … the newspaper answers.

A little more about disinformation.

Since two weeks on YouTube a corona film from South Holland entrepreneur Nico Sloot, who is looking for the truth behind the official story about the virus. The film is a textbook example of coronasceptic citizen journalism: shadowy connections between Big Pharma and Big Tech, moody synthesizer music and Hollands Glorie images of the maker as helmsman on his own boat. In conclusion: the pharmaceutical industry is forcing us to vaccinate, while only a very small part of the population becomes seriously ill from the virus. On Friday was the movie, Covid-19. The System, clicked more than 480,000 times, with 2,000 positive reactions (“hard facts”).

This ‘documentary’ contains a short, disturbing excerpt for NRC readers. Ditch calls to NRC to report that an interview that the newspaper posted in July with corona-fern Feike Sijbesma is wrong; According to him, there are statements in it that the envoy never made, he heard that from Sijbesma himself. And what does NRC say on the other end of the line? Yes, if Sijbesma says that he has not said this, I believe that, I will see if that can be adjusted.

Not good, you think.

What Sloot does not say is that he on camera is not on the line with an NRC editor, but with an employee of the Customer Service department. They speak to readers about the delivery or about problems with their subscription; they cannot judge the content of the newspaper. Nevertheless, the unsuspecting – or already skeptical – viewer gets the impression that NRC is informing the citizen researcher that the interview may indeed be incorrect and will therefore have to be rectified.

But not only Sloot recorded the conversation. I have requested it from Customer Service – as an exception – (those conversations are temporarily stored). And guess what? It was just a little bit different.

Right from the start – the conversation lasts almost thirteen minutes – the Customer Service employee explains that if Sloot wants contact about this article, he must email the editors or use social media. Transferring is not possible now, there is, due to corona, almost no one at the office. Sloot then asks whether the employee is a journalist himself. He answers in the negative: no, he is there for Customer Service. Oh, says subscriber Sloot, we are satisfied with the newspaper, that is all going well – but then he starts talking about the article again. Can’t you say something about that? Well, the employee says kindly, only personally, not on behalf of NRC.

Then a conversation about the content nevertheless takes place – fortunately the employee still keeps a blow to the arm: if something is not right, it must be rectified. Only in the eleventh minute does the monkey come out of the sleeve: Sloot reveals that he is working on a documentary and wants to use this conversation in it. Is that good? Overwhelmed, the employee stammers, well, only as a loose quote, but not as if he were a spokesman for NRC.

Too late. OK thank you! Sloot shouts goodbye.

Apparently that is how it goes, with citizen journalists who are talking about biased, manipulating media. You ‘take them seriously’, as the advice is widely held, speak to them politely – and see yourself cut up in a fragment that is supposed to suggest that the newspaper is once again lying to the readers with a biased, manipulated interview.

What was it about then? Also telling: in the film it remains unclear what exactly would be wrong in the NRC interview with the corona chant. It alludes to the possibility of large-scale vaccination and points out that we must now take measures to prevent a severe lockdown – exactly what happened. Sloot apparently read that as a call for compulsory vaccination. The film shows how the entrepreneur calls Sijbesma who, again with foresight, did not want the conversation in the film. The envoy did send Sloot an email, in which he emphasized that vaccination must of course be voluntary.

The authors of the interview and the spokesperson for Sijbesma who was involved at the time, let me know: yes, there was discussion about the text of the interview. The conversation was rather sharply defined, the Corona thought, a little uncomfortable given his delicate position as – voluntary and unpaid – adviser to the cabinet. But no, there was no question of distorted or invented quotations.

Entrepreneur Sloot himself is curt on the phone: none of this is “exciting”. He insists that the interview is incorrect and says that he is still waiting for an answer from the newspaper. There he has a point, because his details were noted in the conversation and he would hear something else. So with this one.

All in all, an educational event. For Customer Service – and just as much for journalists – it’s a good reminder: stick to your reading and keep in mind that nowadays anything you say can be recorded, saved, cut up and used against you. The Customer Service employee, who recently started working elsewhere, has objected to YouTube that his name appears in the film.

Meanwhile, the incident also illustrates the difference between reporting that searches for facts and verification, and pseudo-journalism that mainly craves confirmation of personal suspicions, opinions and suspicions.

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