The morals of journalism are changing. Spontaneous? I almost have to, because I never hear journalists complain about their working climate. On FB I saw a link to a biography on the site of the VPRO, about Peter Gøtzsche. I thought I had seen that portrait of Gøtzsche before. Vague, so I went looking to look again with a now read look. Nowadays you wouldn't be able to produce such a pharmacocritical document. My search led to real detective work. Tiles at Tegenlicht, I never expected to be interested in that.
On the VPRO site you can read at the biography: "This biography belongs to the episode: Very expensive pills". This is also a very critical broadcast about the price level of medicines and the power of the pharmaceutical companies. It's amazing that it's still online. But in my memory that was not that portrait of Gøtzsche, although he is repeatedly mentioned in it. This is done with excerpts from an interview that is also included in the trailer (see both Twitter if Facebook) has been used. I also made a backup of the trailer, it won't be the first time that a link in my arms finds a mysterious ending.
The full episode "Peperdure pillen" can be found on the site of the VPRO. Farmak criticism, come back to that today. So put on your watchlist.
Here's the trailer on Twitter, for the October 7 broadcast:
The search for Peter Gøtzsche
Searching on the VPRO site for that portrait of Peter Gøtzsche (maybe it hadn't been a Tegenlicht documentary after all?) I came across two identical episodes of "Peperdure pillen", one on October 7, 2018 (in the list at the bottom) and one on November 15, 2018 (at the top). Same text, same thumbnail. Yet they link to two different URLs. A bit crazy, a waste of disk space but it will be necessary. Hopefully they won't do that with all their video material.
One links to https://www.vpro.nl/programmas/tegenlicht/kijk/afleveringen/2018-2019/peperdure-pillen.html
The other to https://www.vpro.nl/programmas/tegenlicht/speel~VPWON_1298220~peperdure-pillen-vpro-tegenlicht~.html
I don't see any systematics in that.
I browsed a little further but in vain. By the way, I didn't see any other broadcast that was repeated after 5 weeks. Apparently, this was a very special episode.
Meet Ups #135 and #136: debriefs
As a result of the Tegenlicht broadcasts, Meet Ups were held, among others in Pakhuis de Zwijger in Amsterdam. There are YouTube registrations of that so I went there to have a look.
It seems that someone at Pakhuis de Zwijger has been shooting there. A YouTube Video from October 5 has as its theme "VPRO Backlight Meet Up #136: Expensive pills“. That's crazy for a debriefing because the first broadcast was only on October 7th.
The video is also about something else entirely: the platform industry, with the title: "Amazon be with us". There was indeed a Meet Up with that title on October 3, about the backlight broadcast about Amazon. Also interesting.
But how does that "Extremely expensive pills" title with complete text come from a later theme with that earlier video about Amazon? That must be a copy-paste mistake by the content manager who looked at his calendar wrong. Or did it by heart, so without any agenda at all.
By the way, the same video about Amazon can be seen not only at Meet Up #136 but also on YT at Meet Up #135, now with matching title and text. 135 is a storage sequence number while that video of a Later Date is: October 16. That's crazy too. He must have been really confused. Or his agenda was backwards.
But actually: A video from October 10 has again the title and text of "VPRO Backlight Meet Up #136: Expensive pills" And it is indeed about that broadcast of October 7th! In any case, that seems to be true.
Unfortunately, I didn't see a Meet Up mentioned in Amsterdam from the "Peperdure pillen" broadcast of November 15th. Well in Mortsel on November 21st. But it links back to the video of October 10th... (?) A month and a half later, a debriefing?!
And on NPO Start there is again only the "Peperdure pillen" of November 15. At least, just look at the screenshot below, there is not even a Tegenlicht broadcast of October 7 in between, it never took place. Too bad, maybe that's why they only broadcast that replay. Oh no, because it had already been discussed on YouTube. Yes, even before the first broadcast. Or... Well, next time better follow the agenda because we'll get confused! Those media guys and girls are making a mess of it.
But read on below the screenshot with the missing October episode, there's more to come.
Numbers don't lie
In the list below (just source code from a web page, nothing special) you can see a list of the Tegenlicht broadcasts in order of broadcast date. The filenames of the videos associated with it are all around 12844xx. Except for one: the one on 15 November. What a coincidence. That file was created much later, as evidenced by serial number 1298xx.
The strange thing is that it stands between 4419 and 4421. That's good for us because only 1 file name fits in between: VPWON_1284420. Sound familiar? Just look five items below: there it is, at October 7th. I mentioned that link in the beginning as one of the links to The page about the broadcast of October 7. So, on the October 7 page, the link used elsewhere for November 15 is there, while the link to the identical October 7 file is below it. It's exactly the same video, only the file from November 15 was created much later than other broadcasts from around that date.
Do you still get it?
I must be mistaken; I'm sure I've seen that very pharma-critical portrait of Gøtzsche somewhere else. But what a mess from the content manager, they should really do something about that. All that data jumbled up; If you're not careful, you'll lose a broadcast just like that. You would almost think that the media has no agenda.
