The morals of journalism are changing. Spontaneously? That almost has to be because I never hear journalists complain about their working environment, they are not being blackmailed or anything like that. What did I see in terms of change? Well, on FB I saw a link to a biography on the VPRO site, about Peter GĂžtzsche. I thought I had seen that portrait of GĂžtzsche before. Interesting because he was an insider but had gone a bit off track with his conspiracy theories, or at least that's what I thought at the time. So I went looking to watch it again with a now refreshed look. Nowadays you would no longer be able to create such a pharmaceutical-critical document. It would be censored. My search led to real detective work. Tiles glow in backlight.
I still found the announcement on X. On the VPRO site it says biography: "Deze biografie hoort bij de aflevering: Peperdure pillen". Ik bekeek die maar dat was niet het uitgebreide portret van GĂžtzsche. Het is een behoorlijk kritische uitzending over het prijsniveau van medicijnen en de macht van de farmaceuten. Evengoed verbazend dat die nog online staat. GĂžtzsche wordt er wel herhaaldelijk in opgevoerd met fragmenten uit een interview dat ook in de trailer (zie zowel Twitter if Facebook) has been used. I also made a backup of the trailer.
De volledige aflevering "Peperdure pillen" staat op de site van de VPRO. Farmakritiek, kom daar nog eens om vandaag de dag. Dus zet op je kijklijst.
Here's the trailer on Twitter, for the October 7 broadcast:
Edit 7-12-2025: Caspar Kempeneers pointed me to a video on X in which I recognize the story that I had also seen on VPRO. You can imagine that that is no longer possible on our damn viewing tube.
The search for Peter GĂžtzsche
Zoekend op de VPRO-site naar dat portret van Peter GĂžtzsche (misschien was het toch geen Tegenlicht-docu geweest?) stuitte ik op twee identieke afleveringen van "Peperdure pillen", Ă©Ă©n op 7 oktober 2018 (in de lijst onderaan) en Ă©Ă©n op 15 november 2018 (bovenaan). Zelfde tekst, zelfde thumbnail. Toch linken ze naar twee verschillende URLs. Beetje gek, verspilling van diskruimte maar het zal wel nodig zijn. Hopelijk doen ze dat niet met al hun videomateriaal.
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
(Edit 7-12-2025: this link is now dead)
The short title seems to me to have been typed in manually, the long one a generated title based on category, serial number, etc. Or was the October 7 episode perhaps simply repeated on November 15?
I browsed some more but to no avail. I also saw further no other broadcast 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 heeft als thema "VPRO Backlight Meet Up #136: Expensive pills". Dat is gek voor een nabespreking want de eerste uitzending was pas op 7 oktober en die Meet Ups waren er juist om de uitzending met publiek te bespreken.
De video gaat trouwens ook over heel wat anders: de platformindustrie, met als titel: "Amazon zij met ons". Er was op 3 oktober 2018 inderdaad een Meet Up met die titel, over de tegenlicht-uitzending over Amazon.
Maar hoe komt die "Peperdure pillen"-titel met complete tekst van een 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 on YouTube, from October 10, 2018 heeft wéér de titel en tekst van "VPRO Backlight Meet Up #136: Expensive pills" en die gaat inderdaad over die uitzending van 7 oktober! Dat lijkt dan in elk geval wel te kloppen.
Van de "Peperdure pillen" uitzending van 15 november zag ik helaas geen Meet Up vermeld in Amsterdam. Wel in Mortsel op 21 November. Maar die linkt weer naar de video van 10 oktober...(?) Anderhalve maand na dato nog een nabespreking?!
En op NPO Start staat inmiddels weer alleen de "Peperdure pillen" van 15 november. Tenminste, kijk maar in het screenshot hieronder, er staat zelfs helemaal geen Tegenlicht uitzending van 7 oktober tussen, die heeft nooit plaatsgevonden. Jammer, misschien dat ze daarom alleen die herhaling hebben uitgezonden. Oh nee, want die was al eerder nabesproken op YouTube. Ja, zelfs vóór de eerste uitzending. Of... Nou ja, volgende keer beter de agenda volgen want zo raken we in de war! Die media-jongens en meisjes maken er een potje van.
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 see a list of the Tegenlicht broadcasts in order of broadcast date. The filenames of the videos associated with it are all around 12844xx. With the exception of one: the one from November 15. What a coincidence. That file was created much later, as evidenced by sequence number 1298xx.
The strange thing is that it is between 4419 and 4421, the order that is also visible on the page. That works out well for us because only 1 file name fits: VPWON_1284420. Looks familiar? Just look five items lower: there it is, at October 7. I mentioned that link at 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 have probably seen that very pharmaceutical-critical portrait of GĂžtzsche somewhere else. But what a mess from the content manager, they should really do something about that. All that data mixed up; duplications... if you're not careful you can easily lose a broadcast. You would almost think that the media has no agenda.
