It started as more good, brilliant, half-baked, bad or disastrous ideas are born in journalism: at the coffee machine. The new Belgian editor-in-chief of NRC Handelsblad Eleven years ago he let it slip that he thought it was strange that this newspaper, after all the best in the Netherlands, did not have an ombudsman.
Perhaps that is precisely why, you could think as a cynic. Previous experiments of NRC to be more accountable to readers and other critics after the gruesome murder of the ‘demonized’ Pim Fortuyn, were stranded on the unwillingness of the editors or general lukewarmness.
But the comment planted a first seed in me. After all, you could already read in journalistic journals that accountability and transparency were ‘the new objectivity’ – so who knows. Not much later, the silver star was indeed pinned to my lapel. The ‘Internal Affairs’ bureau, as it was soon ironically called among editors, had opened.
After eleven years, the hatch is now closed again – at least for me. The institute will continue to exist at NRC, with an experienced successor from September. That says something about journalism, not only about that of NRC but also about other media that now have an ombudsman or woman in the porter’s lodge (de Volkskrant, Fidelity, The Limburger, the NPO). Their numbers have increased, so has their visibility. It is not without reason that the ombudsman function appeared in the Rutte III coalition agreement. Yes, a neoliberal one kiss of death maybe, but somehow also: cool!
Eleven years is also a great survival rate, an Australian colleague, fellow member of the International Association of Ombudsmen and Women, ONO, told me. Yes, it exists and organizes annual conferences in calming locations where the approximately sixty members, from countries such as Canada and Estonia to South Africa and Mexico, exchange experiences, discuss professional ethics and cry together.
Stoic sheriff or sad boa
Meanwhile, the choice of words ‘survival‘ the cliché about ombudsman work. That is the image of the ombudsman not as a stoic sheriff, but as a pathetic boa who is expected on a patrol along journalistic virtue, with at most a sharp pen in his pocket, to address offenders: ‘Say that again, wouldn’t that? right, uh, have to?”
In reality, the relationship with complainants and readers was usually one of constructive – and also mutual – criticism, sometimes firm. After all, the aim is not to tear down the newspaper, but to help make it better, both in terms of content and style. So were the editors’ comments, from the “you were kind” sayers for who couldn’t get the volume up enough, to heartwarming reports of editorial anger over a crumpled Saturday paper with that k** column. There were banging doors – certainly during the first years of the West Flemish revolution at NRC – although they always opened again, albeit sometimes with a shoe print on it.
Reason to stop now is a simple one. No conspiracy, not the result of complaints, declaration, crisis (even if there is one during the delivery) or conflict. Let alone intervention by Bill Gates who wants to place a (new) chip in my head. Instead, the very prosaic agreement with the current editor-in-chief that I would do it for another two years after he took office at his request. Yes please. You also don’t want to find out that your time is up when your dentures clatter on the keyboard.
A lot has changed in that decade – and mostly for the better. The willingness to be open to readers and to reflect on professional ethical questions has undeniably increased throughout journalism. The time of the sovereign adage that we make the newspaper “for ourselves” is long gone. That adage especially created a club feeling and expressed the need of the whole and half academics who increasingly populated journalism, to follow their interests – and sometimes obsessions.
But even then it was never literally true. The newspaper has always been there for readers or, in the case of NRC Handelsblad, for democratic citizens who want to be informed.
strong growth
That journalism is now doing very well – at least much better than the ecstatic internet prophets envisioned who around the turn of the millennium gloated over the imminent end of ‘dead tree journalism’. Also NRC has been experiencing strong growth in readers, subscriptions and appreciation for years.
Since then, drastic changes have taken place in the editorial office. NRC has changed from a classic evening newspaper (starting in 2006 with a cheeky nephew who jumped cheerfully out of bed every day to see what would happen the day after tomorrow) into a full-time digital news organization that also makes a newspaper. Readers have become accustomed to paying for online journalism (thanks to Netflix and Spotify).
The newspaper has also, for the most part, managed to free itself from the daily Gutenberg press deadline. NRC editors now also create podcasts and newsletters, they tweet and (in moderation, luckily) join talk shows. And there came the NRC Code, in which everyone can read how NRC wants to conduct journalism. Not a blockbuster, but still recommended.
Has the institution of ombudsman not outlived itself?
No, because with the increased self-confidence sometimes a curious pontiff also takes possession of ‘quality journalism’. On Twitter, journalists’ long toes sometimes reach right into your screen. The complaint that de Volkskrant submitted to the Press Council against The Green Amsterdammer (after a critical interpretation of that newspaper’s coverage in the opinion weekly), whoever you think is right is a painful example of that touchiness.
The suspicious attitude towards politicians and administrators, which is begged for on social media, sometimes takes on a pose or reflex that is no substitute for real critical research. The Benefits scandal has rightly become a new benchmark for investigative journalism. But not every contradiction or incongruity in a pile of wobbly documents is immediately a Watergate.
Nor does the switch to transparency and greater accountability mean that a newspaper has to surrender itself to ‘the market’, whether that be that of advertisers or of click figures (pardon: readers). Deniors of NRC on Twitter regularly sneer that the newspaper “floats on advertisements” and whose bread one eats, well then you know it. But advertisements, once half of the newspaper’s revenue, actually make up only about a fifth of that. It is not the advertiser that rules, but the readership market.
Also read: Facts are not obedient
Climate panic and woke sectarianism
More pressing is therefore the question of how NRC should position itself towards those readers in an uncertain time of declining civic trust, political extremism (Forum for Democracy is now, better late than ever, called the extreme right in NRC, although even that seems already a euphemism), climate panic, arguing about gender identity, woke sectarianism and other revolutionary aspirations.
First of all: curious and inquisitive, rather than partis pris. That fits a civic journalism who see journalism primarily as a public service for democratic citizens. NRC Handelsblad has never been a newspaper that wanted to re-educate its readers, certainly not with an imported catechism. It had to become, in 1970, a chic newspaper for those who were willing to think for themselves, instead of being dictated to by the law. Rather untimely, in a turbulent period full of sky stormers. Yet that turned out to be the formula for success.
Journalistic engagement with plural democracy does not have to be activism that already knows exactly how the world works (and all the news fits into it). But it is a choice against extremism and against treating such forces as ‘also an opinion’ or as ‘normal’ political parties. Those who pass on kettle music indiscriminately will eventually join in on their own playing.
NRC has learned that lesson through trial and error for the right flank, where an appeal to ‘the angry citizen’ obscures a worldview of hateful conspiracy theories.
But critical distance is appropriate for any political and social movement that does not want its own moral clarity to be disturbed by unwelcome opinions or by annoying facts that do not fit the picture.
Whoever passes on hateful kettle music indiscriminately will eventually blow a game themselves
Or by ‘incorrect’ language. Under the influence of activism, the media, including NRC, have become much more aware of the stigmatizing or exclusive charge of words, social codes and structures. Especially when it comes to sexism or racism, themes that seemed to have evaporated in liberal euphoria but are back in full force.
However, they are never merely a matter of ‘correct’ language or respect for personal, untouchable experiences. Emancipatory movements also always conduct a power struggle and propagate an image of society that is not self-evident or has to be stealthily copied into language, but that just as well deserves journalistic research.
In the polarized 1970s, NRC Handelsblad contrary in his skepticism towards ideology and his distaste for dogmas. These had to be viewed with suspicion, because reality does not fit into any dogmatic box of blocks.
That distrust of “every collectivity” was true according to the Principles also the editors themselves. “Watchfulness toward ourselves” was also needed. Because “man” (yes, also NRC’s) “is an accustomed animal”.
Even for these reasons, you would hope that the editors of NRC Handelsblad populated not by mere like-minded minds, but by a mixture of progressives and conservatives, radicals and centrists, sky stormers and earth guardians. The editorial staff has become more diverse – as has finally the pool of columnists. Rightly so, but not an end in itself: it should enhance the scope and depth of the newspaper.
And the ombudsman? Against that background, he is more of a rehab animal. Someone who not only points out ‘the rules’, but who also exposes gaps in reporting, identifies blind spots and points out creeping accommodation – and calls them up for discussion.
For a liberal newspaper, aware of its relativity, no standard should be absolute. Except that of unceasing, open-minded and truthful inquiry — and self-examination.
A version of this article also appeared in NRC Handelsblad on 31 December 2021
A version of this article also appeared in NRC in the morning of December 31, 2021
#longer #newspaper