Spent last Thursday (July 13). News hour attention to the departure of D66 leader Sigrid Kaag. In a so-called wordcloud we showed in our broadcast how people reacted on social media to her departure from politics. But this wordcloud did not accurately represent the ratios of the responses and that was not good, as we acknowledged earlier in this statement.
In recent days, we have received more questions in response to that first statement. News hour stands for transparency in the considerations and that is why we are happy to provide a further explanation.
It is certain that we cannot substantiate our conclusions as we reported them in the broadcast. For example, we incorrectly stated that the proportion of tweets with misogynistic connotations was ‘most’ in the group of tweets with a negative connotation. We also found that ‘many’ negative tweets are about Kaag’s family and husband, and are racist in tone. That was also incorrect. The fact that this could happen has to do with a complex of factors: time pressure, an overly ambitious idea, editors who worked at cross-purposes and incorrect execution of the content analysis. Again, it shouldn’t have happened that way.
In any case, the reason was not, as can be read here and there on social media, that support for Kaag and / or D66 was deliberately sought. News hour is independent and unaffiliated and reports about every political party or politician equally and critically, as the history of our program has amply proven.
It is also incorrect that News hour invented or added terms themselves. All negatively charged words shown by us appeared in the tweets we viewed. It is possible that specific terms came up in one search, but not in another, due to spelling variants.
Obviously we regret the situation. And of course we evaluate the events and learn lessons from the mistakes made.
The editors-in-chief of News hour
2023-07-17 19:29:14
#Explanation #News #hour #broadcast #July
