Quiz time. Which EU country has just dropped from sixth all the way down to 28th place in the annual press freedom index compiled by Paris-based Reporters Without Borders, following changes to the way the index is compiled which give more weight to journalists’ personal safety?
It’s not giving much away to say that the answer – out of a possible 180 states and territories around the world – is one of the countries you’re least likely to have considered, a place regarded as so traditionally liberal you probably ruled it out without a second thought.
Yes, it's the famously chilled Netherlands, land of tulips, cheese, windmills, Old Masters, and "coffee shops" selling cannabis to spaced-out tourists – but with a thriving underbelly of vicious gangsterism that most of the adult population understandably prefers not to think about.
On reflection, you may remember there's been a series of drug-related shootings in recent years, the most high-profile of which was the point-blank assassination of the country's best-known crime journalist, Peter R de Vries (64), in Amsterdam, a year ago next month.
De Vries was a law unto himself. Warned repeatedly that his life might be in danger, he had refused offers of 24-hour police protection on the grounds that it would prevent him doing his job with the irrepressible independence for which he’d become famous.
In an attack eerily reminiscent of the murder of Veronica Guerin, then 36, shot six times while waiting at traffic lights at Newland's Cross, near Dublin, on June 26th, 1996, de Vries was shot five times in the head as he emerged from the city centre studios of RTL and walked to his car.
‘Excessive violence’
De Vries wasn't the first and he won't be the last. In September 2019, 44-year-old husband, father, lawyer and part-time judge Derk Wiersum was shot dead on his Amsterdam doorstep.
Both de Vries and Wiersum were working on different aspects of the same gangland trial involving multiple murders – worrying enough to make premier Mark Rutte blanche a few hours after the Wiersum killing when the name of the case was whispered in his ear just before a live TV interview.
In the aftermath of the de Vries shooting, justice minister Ferd Grapperhaus publicly conceded that "excessive violence" against politicians, lawyers or journalists was "no longer a taboo" – and that's the eco-system in which journalists in the Netherlands are now working.
However, what was particularly interesting about the press freedom index is that the underworld problems, chilling though they are, are not the only work-a-day challenges for reporters involving worsening aggression in Europe’s most densely populated country.
“Polarisation of public opinion regarding Covid restrictions and surrounding the issue of immigration has also led to an increase in verbal and physical aggression against journalists, especially against photographers and camera crews,” states the report.
The coronavirus incidents are relatively recent. A firebomb was delivered to a journalist's home in Groningen. A car was driven at a TV journalist covering a protest in a staunchly Protestant village. Female reporters and reporters of colour are especially vulnerable to snap anger.
‘Shorter fuses’
“The climate has deteriorated quickly,” says the journalists’ union, NVJ. “People have shorter fuses.”
As a result of this heightened physical threat, self-censorship and a reluctance to tackle certain types of controversy are on the increase in the Netherlands, say Reporters Without Borders.
Lest there be any doubt, this is the second report recently to underline the same basic fact: the safety of journalists in the Netherlands is declining.
The first, which came last month from the Free Press Unlimited foundation in Amsterdam, warned that aggression against journalists was rising “amid a hardening of public debate and increasing polarisation in society”.
Freelance reporters without safety training or protection were particularly at risk, it said, as were female journalists in general.
What the authors of these reports may perhaps not be aware of is that the Dutch counterterrorism co-ordinator too has thrown his hat into this particularly unsavoury ring with a number of internal reports recently warning – yet again – about “polarisation” in society.
Extremist parties at both ends of the political spectrum, the co-ordinator said, were using the kind of charged rhetoric that could stimulate “a lack of trust in government and feed potential anti-democratic tendencies”.
Like most nationalities, the Dutch have a rather idealistic view of their own country as fundamentally good-hearted and open.
However, times change. And, as Macbeth famously found to his cost, when three unpleasant messages come together it’s always a good idea to start listening.
