Nieuwsuur

Nieuwsuur   (Television, Propaganda)
Headquarters	Hilversum, Utrecht, Netherlands
Type	•  public •  propaganda
"See. Question. Know."

Nieuwsuur or News hour is the Dutch main late night current affairs program by public state-funded broadcasters NOS and NTR. Being similar to the BBC's news segments, it is focused on Dutch and European politics and also hosts debates, interesting enough mostly between deep politicians or consultants with special interests. Nieuwsuur calls itself "impartial, independent and not tied to special interests" but steers towards the state official narrative or official opposition narrative in many cases influencing public opinion, including on MH17, Covid-19, Brexit, the War on Terror and also on important national topics like the Dutch War on Drugs. It has a tendency to present less "likeable" stories as a limited modified hangout with the help of (deep) politicians, lobbyists or just plain disinformation agents like Rian van Rijbroek and Julian Assange or Ank Bijleveld on the 2015 Hawija bombing.

Official Narrative

Nieuwsuur was formed in 2010 after a fusion between daily political programs "The Hague Today" (ran from 1970), NOVA (1992) and Network (from 1996) after much resistance from the non-public broadcasters that made those two programs. The Dutch public government and NOS declared them "too biased". NOVA won dozens of awards including one Emmy Award for a documentary on the Taliban. Network revealed dozens of instances of state-wide corruption regarding murder cases, the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia or psychiatric institutions for minors being used in the region-wide drug trade and even got a Emmy for the documentary regarding the victims of the Beslan School Siege. How biased, how bad. These programs are bad you see? Nothing to see here. No. Move along. You don't want to be labelled a "conspiracy theorist" do you?

Stories

Seth Rich

When Assange raised the topic of the murder of Seth Rich, his Dutch host commented "That was just a robbery, I believe. Wasn’t it?" Julian Assange replied: "No. There’s no finding. So... I’m suggesting that our sources take risks." He continued to hint that Seth Rich might have been a source for Wikileaks. This raises questions as to why Assange was so vague and whether Rich was an example of a assassination resulting in premature death. Edward Snowden seemingly implied computer scientist Seth Rich was the source of the US Democratic National Committee leaks in 2016.

Cold War

After World War 2 the CIA employed a few Dutch secret service agents that actively started opposition groups in Romania and Bulgaria from the 1950s, Nieuwsuur revealed in 2016. Why or what they did there is unknown.

AIVD

The NOS released an unique article (unique as it was released in English by dozens of major news outlets, as if it was Sinclair broadcasting) written in English in 2018 revealing the AIVD infiltrated an Russian group of hackers named "Cozy Bear" that was trying to influence American politics, this turned out not... entirely true, as proven by Craig Murray, Wikileaks and William Binney etc, which means the AIVD conducted a psychological operation to support their American counterparts. Surprisingly enough Nieuwsuur didn't stop there but tried to imply the Denial-of-Service attacks on Dutch banks and institutions were being done in retaliation for these revelations. The NOS did admit they had "no evidence" with security consultants agreeing, but still continued to run the story, making it an quite extreme example of creating enemy images or in this case Russophobia. Similar to other cases, an 18 year old (that seems like a bigger problem, it seems) turned out to be the culprit and was interviewed in newspaper The Telegraaf.

In July 2019 the AIVD tried to prohibit Dutch journalist Huib Modderkolk from releasing a book that was planning to reveal the name of the operation and a foreign spook that cooperated in the Cozy Bear case. The case was noted by lawyers to be very strange as the AIVD seemingly tried to censor parts that were requested with public sources, before he finished the book. The AIVD won the case even though Modderkolk had already removed details after he e-mailed them a concept version. Modderkolk started investigating after he produced an article regarding the sources of wikileaks and his office was inexplicably hit with power outrages which he and his colleague suspected was done deliberate. Modderkolk worked 6 years on this book - called It's war, but nobody sees it - and among other things revealed the CIA often utilized the AIVD for quite intensive tasks (including aggressive cyber warfare such as involvement in the spreading of the Stuxnet-virus in Iran) that the AIVD got nothing back for return. Among other things, the book is full of interesting questionable decisions by the AIVD, including the "suicide" of infant-hackers (again these kiddo hackers, this is seriously a problem it seems, one would think), giving the CIA classified information for drone attacks killing more children, GCHQ hacking European institutions with the protection of Europol or the fact that Russian cyber security company Kaspersky was targeted multiple times for alleged cooperation with the FSB, giving Rian van Rijbroek's "ludicrous" allegations some very strange coincidences. Modderkolk is de facto the only book about the AIVD that was allowed in Nieuwsuur raising questions why the book was so publicized in the first place, perhaps as a form of a limited hangout.

Rian van Rijbroek

Full article: Rian van Rijbroek

Being presented as a consultant for intelligence agencies and former NSA officer by former Dutch Minister Willem Vermeend, Rian van Rijbroek appeared live on Dutch current affairs program Nieuwsuur on the 25th of January 2018 in a peculiar 5 minute segment regarding the latest Denial-of-service attack on Dutch banks. Van Rijbroek blamed Russia, Iran and North Korea for the attacks on the Dutch banks, government institutions and other sites. Citing an "intelligence agency that shared those details with her today", she proclaimed these groups to be testing the security-systems before letting "ATMs spit money as seen in the US" (a method known as "jackpotting", which she didn't mention and although known in the US, but requiring physical proximity to the ATM and not a denial-of-service attack). As a solution she proposed switching to a blockchain (a central mechanism in all cryptocurrencies) and the use of external networks for citizens (VPNs) when online banking and stop using mobile banking applications altogether.

Following many cybersecurity-experts voicing their frustration about the segment, the NOS released a statement a week later in which all her statements were invalidated by IT-professionals while apologizing for "causing confusion with the speculations van Rijbroek made", with the Assistant-Editor remarking "she told different things instead of what was rehearsed with her". An 18 year old (yes, again) was arrested and charged for the attacks on the 1st of February.. The NOS never revealed what was rehearsed with her.

Rotterdam

A Turkish minister gets attacked and placed in another car on TV. Nieuwsuur revealed Rotterdam Mayor Aboutaleb authorized the National and Military Police to.. arrest the minister and shoot at will if she or the guards didn't comply. Interesting.

As part to create a polarizing perspective and enemy images Nieuwsuur shifted during the late 2010s from a general extended news show to include the "common man" in their segments, most notably around elections. Nieuwsuur has hosted multiple prolific debates. In one days before the 2017 Dutch General Elections, Prime Minister Mark Rutte was put against a former student - he is a part-time high school teacher - following a diplomatic incident resulting in riots that was noted to have influenced the election. The riots started after Fatma Betül Sayan Kaya - Minister of Family and Social Policies - was denied entrance to the Turkish embassy in Rotterdam to speak on the topic of the Turkish referendum. Rutte and Mayor Ahmed Aboutaleb and ministers Lodewijk Asscher and Bert Koenders denied Kaya entrance as they didn't want the Turkish government to campaign on.... Turkish soil at the balcony of the embassy after the Turkish government was denied to enter Dutch airspace entirely. Director-general Dick Schoof handed a letter in name of the Dutch government of Rutte that the Dutch police forces were to "use force if nessecary".

The Turkish actually negotiated the session and cut those off after the Dutch increasingly tried to alter the details of the speech, something not legal under EU law. Dutch police, special intervention teams and SWAT teams followed the Turkish convoy, encircled them and ordered them to follow a Dutch convoy back to Germany or the embassy to be closed. Kaya refused for hours with her convoy allegedly threatening to "become martyrs" until she was assaulted by police personnel and being restrained and driven out of the country. Director-general of the AIVD Dick Schoof confirmed to have personally sent the order to the National Police and Military police to arrest Kaya but denied shooting her and her guards was sanctioned. The 17 year old student was most noticeably angered by the statements Rutte made on Dutch TV when being confronted with footage of the Turkish rioters calling the NOS "fake news" and assaulting the camera crew live on TV. Rutte said in reaction that the Turkish-Dutch citizens should "bugger off" themselves.

Brexit

Clingendael-expert Rem Korteweg projected Theresa May would start to offer a second referendum, or revoke Brexit altogether in 2018 just to remain in power, but hinted the UK could be given Brexit and re-join after a few years by stonewalling trade-agreements. Korteweg is the main "brexit-expert" and has offered multiple interesting soundbites including one where he admitted "Theresa May resigned because, among others, her husband told her she had gone too far". Business man Jort Kelder was already on TV during the initial Brexit campaign complaining about the "never-ending amount of Europhiles creeping from all corners arguing how awful Brexit is" making it seem "The idea seems to be that if you denounce the annoying itch of the EU, you'd to be left starving like a third world country".

War on Terror

Nieuwsuur revealed on the 10th of August 2018 that the Dutch were actively supporting "rebel groups in Syria the Dutch government has declared at least one a terrorist organisation" at least since 2015 in the form of outfits (not declared with what purpose) and pick-up trucks in a "counter-terrorism" program for "non-lethal assistance". Nieuwsuur decided to publish their investigation after the Dutch Public Prosecutor was trying to sentence a man that had fought for one of these groups. Nieuwsuur actually put the Dutch narrative of "only supporting moderate opposition groups" into question as every group was entangled with a more violent one. The research found several to this day classified documents with over 100 rebels and at least 6 groups receiving Dutch support including satellite-phones, laptops, mattresses, backpacks and camera's with the help of Turkish company Condor and Washington D.C based company Creative Associates. Dutch Ministers Stef Blok and Sigrid Kaag send a letter to parliament announcing the end of the program, explaining a lack of oversight and the letting go of the idea that Bashar al-Assad would be overthrown. Several other incidents were noted to be part of the decisions including 1000s of food supplies that "got in the hands of Al-Qaida", with Bert Koenders seemingly lying again about how those incidents ended or if weapons were indeed part of the deal as one group was seen filming placing machine guns on their Dutch-funded Toyota.

The program had a 2 part documentary that showed dozens of state-funded religious schools with at least 20.000 children in total were being taught "extremist and radical" thinking described as "old school sharia-law".

Teeven

Nieuwsuur revealed in 2014 the Public Prosecution Service and former Dutch Minister of Justice Fred Teeven was the money launderer for at least 4 million guilders (or around 2m Euro's) for a Dutch drug trafficking criminal named Cees H. without knowledge of anyone outside Teeven and Field officer of the Dutch police in Amsterdam Zwagerman during Teeven's time as prosecutor. Other details of this agreement were a secretly agreed "early release". Teeven and Zwagerman obfuscated numerous details and parts of the process, concealing many assets of H. Teeven was known as a "crime-fighter" tackling many drug traffickers that were becoming rich in Amsterdam with the drug trade.

A journalist named Hendrik Jan Korterink was in contact with Nieuwsuur for several classified documents obtained about about an infamous corruption case regarding a possibly corrupt national detective unit in the 1990s, when this journalist revealed he knew someone that had a copy of the actual deal. Nieuwsuur started investigating this deal and the new Ministry of Security and Justice that Teeven started working for in 2010 responded numerous times that the actual amount of laundered money was much lower than accused by the journalist and that any other "reconstructions and conclusions we will just leave for you to make". Teeven and Opstelten denied multiple times there was any proof left in the Ministry in The Hague, which diffused the situation initially until the Speaker of the House Anouchka van Miltenburg received another whistleblower's letter in which the details and the deal was confirmed. When this letter was handed to Nieuwsuur, Nieuwsuur kept being prohibited any more info on the case and "recruited" civil servants working in the ministry that all separately confirmed parts of the letter.

Nieuwsuur only published the letter and the content of the deal in 2015 15 years after the deal. After the broadcast an external IT-expert was hired to crack an old government computer which exposed the receipt to exist. The formerly "missing documents" turned out to be even more intriguing and the investigation resulted in Teeven - as State Secretary - and Minister of Security and Justice Ivo Opstelten resigning in 2015. Quite strangely, Minister of Health, Welfare and Sport during that decade Edith Schippers called the case "very suspicious as Nieuwsuur just hold back the story until the 2015 Dutch provincial elections (that decide the Dutch Senate seats)" and suggested it being a conspiracy of itself at which head editor Joost Orange responded "a shame to be directed at us without any proof". This was after Speaker of the House Van Miltenburg was on course for becoming the third "victim of these revelations" after she admitted to throwing the letter of the whistleblower through the shredder initially.

Hawija

After interviewing military and civilian sources in the US, Iraq and The Hague and a joint Dutch and US FOIA request regarding the 2015 Hawija bombing, newspaper NRC and public broadcaster NOS released an article and appeared on current affairs program Nieuwsuur on the 18th of October 2019 revealing the communication between the Pentagon, the Dutch operational air force base in Jordan, CENTCOM HQ in Qatar and The Hague. NRC revealed that The Pentagon released a document showing CENTCOM had provided the Dutch MOD with a summary on the 15th of June 2015, assessing it "credible" that at least 70 people were dead, mentioning 22 women and 26 children.

Dutch officers in Jordan and monitoring MOD officers in The Hague already informed the Secretary of Defense following the strike on the 3th and 4th of June "with the report of plausible civilian casualties", and continued to confirm it on 4 different occasions. Airwars and the Red Cross reported in August 2015 that the strike killed 70 to 170 people. Defence Secretary Jeanine Hennis informed Foreign Affairs minister Bert Koenders and Prime-Minister Mark Rutte in June, but both had no memory of the conversation taking place in 2018. Hennis lied on two occasions in 2015 to MPs of Dutch parliament that there was no Dutch involvement of a bombardment in Iraq with multiple deaths.

During the COVID-19 pandemic several parts of the requested declassified documents requested in early 2020 were published. Apart from the more than 25 residential buildings that were "overlooked" and can't be explained by neither government, the U.S Army admitted that the Dutch knew of the increased risk of civilian casualties, but conspired to publish an attack plan that only named "one barn" as the collateral damage, even though the CIA (revealed to have 4 informants in the area) was confirmed to "have warned of the nearby proximity of a civilian neighbourhood", even giving the projected attack the highest rating for potential collateral damage putting the plausible deniability of Ank Bijleveld into question, as Bijleveld survived her 4th night-long debate in the Dutch lower house still blaming the US when being asked how precision strikes on one plant can destroy over 260 buildings.. Dutch Parliament refused to order a parliamentary enquiry even when the Dutch Safety Board confirmed they were prohibited from investigating the case as the Dutch Army can't be trialled if not court-martialled.

Covid-19

Nieuwsuur supported the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (or RIVM in Dutch) claims that face masks weren't proven to be effective and therefore should not be mandatory in public apart from public transport, even when many schools and offices were showed to be accelerating the risks of local outbreaks due to poor ventilation. A research published in July of 2020 revealed regions with bad air pollution throughout the Netherlands and other places had more cases than other places with lower amounts of pollution, citing 8% increase in deaths. Nieuwsuur actually defended the Dutch "intelligent lockdown" that included "not one clear line of strategy", with the RIVM explaining immunity can't be achieved if everyone just sits at home making the Dutch quite similar to Dominic Cummings alleged statements to "let old people die". Multiple professors called the policy of only making masks mandatory in 5 main streets in the main cities "bullocks" and "against the Dutch constitution", Dutch professors had already called for people to "never pay the fines for socializing or not wearing masks" giving similar reasons. Mark Rutte called the policy "a form of maximum control".

Dutch political scientist Maurice de Hond - a staunch critic of the Dutch government and their official narrative regarding their refusal to apply local lockdowns but just shut down the whole country resulting in swat teams jumping into people's houses if they suspected the inhabitants weren't from the same bubble - was "unofficially banned" from all current affair programs until mid-summer when the Dutch public lost faith in the Covid policies. Nieuwsuur put the RIVM under more scrutiny when they revealed hundreds of retirement homes forced their employees to continue working through the pandemic even when having symptoms, as the RIVM didn't have the capacity to organize enough tests. Dozens of deceased seniors are projected to have died because of these scandals.

MH-17

Quite unsurprisingly, the program supports the claim Russians and Ukrainians shot down Malaysian Airlines 17.

Spooks

Nieuwsuur has the unusual proficiency to find and interview spooks. One particularly interesting bit was when a forum on the topic of the Syrian Civil War was disrupted after several survivors saw an alleged officer of Al-Nusra and tried restraining him and calling the police. This Syrian national denied at first, but was revealed to be an active spook for the AIVD travelling from Syria to the Dutch border where he worked for the Al-Nusra Front. The AIVD started utilizing him after discovering he was travelling with 100.000 dollars from an unknown source from Saudi Arabia. After travelling to Amsterdam via Frankfurt by car, the AIVD encircled him, couldn't find the money and started to utilize him as informant placing him at congresses and Dutch meetings regarding tackling former "extremists" entering the country.

The man, identified as Abdelaziz A., was already termed by Dutch intelligence to be a "serious case" being called the "Emir of Raqqa", having made promotional videos for Al-Nusra and being recorded as admiring to having murdered people in Syria. A. also told about his past in a book from an Australian journalist. He even admitted to being on of the leaders of Al-Nusra. A. gained even more prominence when his girlfriend was revealed to be Ans Boersma, a journalist for a major financial newspaper in the Netherlands. The Turkish government arrested and expelled Boersma from the country after they discovered she tried to illegally acquire immigration papers for A., her boyfriend at that time. The Dutch Public Prosecutor didn't believe her when she said to believe A. claim he was just "a rebel fighting against Assad". The AIVD even tried to get A. out of the country themselves after he got burned at the forum.

Interesting Quotes

Dutch Ambassador Pete Hoekstra was confronted with...incorrect....statements that he said Dutch streets had no-go zones with politicians being burned. Hoekstra called the interviewer making that statement "fake news". The American correspondent had a fascinating response.

“(...) We thought let's stand there so that the Berkut won't shoot as they won't shoot when western people would stand there between Ukrainians. The idea from several people that Mr. Putin would sit in his chair watching us on TV and say: let's invade Ukraine is nonsense”
'

Deep politician Hans van Baalen was banned from Russia 1 year after these statements.

“To everyone sympathising with the Charlie Hebdo shooting I'd say for the love of god, pack your bags and leave. Get Lost”
'

Muslim mayor of Rotterdam Ahmed Aboutaleb has a tendency for these kind of public announcements.

“The AIVD and MIVD are subordinates of the Americans. The Dutch work for the Americans. They do what we tell them to do. They aren't valued because of their capacity, but just because they give us a free passage, that's what the NSA uses them for. (...) Look what France is doing and even they couldn't stop all those terror attacks”
'

Edward Snowden being interviewed in Russia by former American correspondent Eelco Bosch van Rosenthal.

Regarding Donald Trump displacing illegal immigrants and their children from their families with the help of ICE a video was shown that began with this statement;

“These people are animals. They are not humans"”
'

Nieuwsuur apologized and explained the video was acquired from Reuters regarding Mexican drug gang MS-13 for something else than this segment.

Problems

Filling a .... gap that never existed in Dutch current affairs programs it must be noted that it formed during the negotiation and lobbying of the George W. Bush administration for extended Dutch support for War in Afghanistan and Iraq that Jan Peter Balkenende was very keen on, but failed to maintain a coalition government in support for it, and also during the rise of the Internet and just at the end of the "golden age of TV". With financial sanctions following the Global Financial Crisis on the public broadcasting apparatus, Nieuwsuur is one of the few remaining current affairs programs on Dutch TV, and is noted by media-experts to be more popular than the regular news during the 2010s. It tries to appeal to younger audiences by giving subscriptions through WhatsApp.

The TV-program often has unexplainable..."lapses of judgement" with examples being, calling a climate activist a "climate expert", running a segment on a head-editor of newspaper Trouw that stopped the use of comment sections with the remark that Twitter and Facebook are just ruining the debate with Nieuwsuur not questioning how one of their own columnists called for Pim Fortuyn to "get aids" as he was a "dirty faux-professor with the intelligence of Adolf Hitler and the charm of Heinrich Himmler"., or the "search for the normal Muslim" resulting in a main mosque being the sole source for these muslims but with the place funded by the Muslim Brotherhood that was already under the scoop of the AIVD for half a decade for "conservative ideas if not their direct relation with Egypt".

In bigger cases plausible deniability of the editorial staff or the pundits itself can be very effective resulting in the average viewer of the program not noticing the forms of social engineering that are being employed, although in Nieuwsuur's defence it must be noted they are one of the last 10 Dutch TV-programs remaining with investigative journalism revealing for example a organ donation campaign targeting poor families in big cities linked to human organ trafficking, a "culture in Amsterdam's financial district where doing cocaine is mandatory" and how several deep state actors from the University of Groningen are helping criminals obtain EU passports in Malta viewable on their YouTube channel.

Many thanks to our Patrons who cover ~2/3 of our hosting bill. Please join them if you can.