NIS NEWS BULLETIN: Rutger van Santen, chairman of the Parliamentary Press Association (PPV), has been suspended by Radio Netherlands World Service (RNW) on grounds of his prejudice against MP Geert Wilders.
Van Santen is not allowed to write anything for a month. After that, he is not allowed to report on Dutch politics for another three months, newspaper De Volkskrant reported yesterday.
The measure was prompted by an interview the reporter had with leftwing Green (GroenLinks) MP Tofik Dibi for TV channel Het Gesprek (The Interview). Van Santen asked Dibi to call Wilders a racist. Despite refusals by the young MP, Van Santen continued to press him to use this term.
According to RNW chief editor Wim Jansen, Van Santen is "too emotionally involved in his subject, has become too much an interested party and can no longer take care to take a journalistic distance." His behaviour therefore damages the reputation of RNW, a government-subsidised broadcaster.
Van Santen had already been warned twice by RNW earlier, in August 2007 and last March, not to continually display his aversion to Wilders.
In the past, Van Santen was active on behalf of the far-left Pacifist Socialist Party (PSP) and of the pro-Palestine movement Palestina Komittee. Nonetheless, he worked his way up to chairman of the parliamentary press. Recently, he made a complaint on behalf of the PPV when Wilders was chosen by the population as politician of the year 2007. [Source: Parliamentary Press Chairman Suspended for Anti-Wilders Bias]
The Dawning of a New Dark Age (Paperback - UK)
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