Journalists’ union NVJ calls hotline against NRC journalist ‘alarming’

The Dutch Association of Journalists (NVJ) finds it “alarming” and “more than harmful” that the Limburg former deputy Ger Driessen (CDA) has set up a hotline for experiences with NRCjournalist Joep Dohmen. General secretary of the organization Thomas Bruning stated this on Tuesday trade magazine villa media said. He would consider it a “good signal” if the CDA decides to distance itself from the hotline and thinks about expelling the initiator Driessen.

The former deputy set up the hotline on Monday in his own words to collect “more examples” of what he calls “the Dohmen method”. He claims there are inaccuracies in Dohmen’s recently released book The Friends Reunionabout abuses in Limburg’s administrative culture, which Dohmen, together with NRCjournalist Paul van der Steen wrote. Driessen says on the website of the reporting center that the book suggests that “Limburg and its administrators were just about put on earth to rustle and cheat the case”.

“At a time when journalism is under attack, such a personal attack is more than damaging,” Bruning said villa media“certainly because it comes from (former) politicians with an exemplary function.” NRCeditor-in-chief René Moerland states that there are “good ways” to raise “inaccuracies or criticism of a journalist”. “That can be done by going to the publisher, an editor-in-chief, the Press Council or the judge. There is no need for a hotline for that.”

Response CDA

CDA party chairman Hans Huibers told ANP news agency on Tuesday afternoon that his party “stands for freedom of the press”. “A hotline against a journalist does not fit with that.” Huibers says that he also let Driessen know.

Bruning of the NVJ refers in addition to the established reporting center also to the “very aggressive” statements by CDA MP and former minister and state secretary Raymond Knops about Dohmen and journalists from The Limburger, earlier this month. An investigation by those newspapers showed that in 2010, when he was also a member of parliament, Knops was wrongly given tens of thousands of euros in advantage when purchasing a building plot.

Knops took the journalists to court and spoke of the “gang of Dohmen” in a speech before the court. “The same pattern every time. Brutal, intimidating, reversing the burden of proof and ‘hearing both sides’ as a checklist.” NRCeditor-in-chief Moerland called Knops’ comment “an unprecedented attack on us as a journalistic organization”. Spokesperson of the NVJ Paul Teixeira found the statements of Knops “reprehensible”†

Also read: Hard attack by CDA MP Knops in lawsuit against journalist from NRC