Safia Yachou, a journalist and consumer expert at HLN and VTM NIEUWS, was tipped off by a reader about dubious business practices at On Line Fitness. This chain of gyms is owned by Nicolas De Bruyn, a Flemish entrepreneur known for his appearance on the TV show The Sky Is the Limit.

“We get a lot of complaints about gym memberships,” Yachou explains. “This woman claimed she had signed an unfair contract that she couldn’t get out of. Further investigation soon led to several other people with the same problem – they couldn’t cancel their membership, not even if they had a long-term illness like cancer. We also got in touch with lawyers who had filed lawsuits against the chain, and we spoke to a professor of consumer law who had reservations about the contracts.”

After the story broke on HLN and VTM NIEUWS, a huge number of complaints came flooding in. “I was gobsmacked – it was as if Pandora’s box had been opened. The trick is to take that one lead and dig deeper. The people affected were happy that we had ‘finally’ brought this to light, but De Bruyn insisted that everything was above board. As a consumer expert, it’s nice to make an impact and give people a voice.”

But the story wasn’t over just yet. The news and tip line 4040 also received reports about dodgy dealings at Business Academy, another company owned by De Bruyn. “We broke that story as well. All these revelations led to an investigation by the East Flanders public prosecutor’s office and the Economic Inspectorate. De Bruyn responded by announcing an internal review. Stories like these show the power of 4040 and our role as a social watchdog. At the same time, we’re raising awareness among consumers and giving them the tools to avoid getting into these kinds of situations.”

Humo reporter Jan Antonissen spent months investigating Changchun Shao, an Antwerp-based Chinese spy who had infiltrated European politics. It had long been known that Shao had received support from Filip Dewinter, one of the key figures in Vlaams Belang, Belgium’s far-right Flemish nationalist party. But the exact extent of this support had never been investigated – until Jan decided to sink his teeth into the story. His investigation, carried out in collaboration with the Apache research platform, revealed that Dewinter had helped Shao – a representative of the Chinese Communist Party, the ideological opposite of Vlaams Belang – for four years. “Even after Shao was deported, they remained in contact,” says Jan. In 2020, during the early days of the pandemic, the Chinese agent even sent 10,000 face masks to his loyal friend Dewinter.”

The latter denied these allegations and invited the journalists to his office to tell his side of the story. “For our convenience, Dewinter had some binders on his desk with documents that supposedly supported his version of events. One of the documents was an unsigned letter from China stating that Shao had not supplied face masks. After Dewinter submitted this letter to the Flemish Parliament, the official investigation into the face mask story was suspended.”

When the journalists asked if they could take a picture of the letter, Dewinter hesitated for a moment, but finally agreed. Further investigative work revealed that the letter had in fact been sent by Shao himself. In other words, Shao denied any and all involvement on Shao’s part. Did the Flemish Parliament get the wool pulled over their eyes? It happens to the best of us.

As a climate reporter, Trouw’s Maarten van Gestel often receives positive reactions to his coverage, but sometimes readers can be critical or even angry. “My article on the climate impact of cheese put me at the centre of a firestorm the likes of which I’d never experienced before. Apparently, cheese is a sensitive topic in the Netherlands. Over 3,000 people responded, with comments like ‘I don’t give a crap about sustainable food’ and ‘Trouw doesn’t employ journalists, but activists’.”

Van Gestel was shocked by the reactions, but they also made him curious. “Lots of people in our society feel this way. Just look at the election victory of the PVV, which wants to put climate policy ‘through the shredder’. What’s creating this anger around sustainability? Why are people afraid of ‘green madness’?”

He decided to find out by going on a road trip to visit four angry readers – not to argue, but to try to understand them better. “There were some tough moments, but the conversations were also informative and empathetic. And sometimes they were just really funny. Masha from Zeeland told me she didn’t like people telling her what to eat, Marc from Limburg was afraid that his way of life was under threat, and Jan from Drenthe – a lifelong farmer and Trouw reader – was hurt because he felt that farmers and dairy were getting too much negative coverage. He had stopped reading the newspaper.”

All four were happy that a journalist had made the effort to visit them and listen to their stories. “I wrote a piece about my road trip in Trouw’s weekend magazine, and later I also had a conversation with Jan on the radio. While we were on the air, he told me that the experience had made him start reading the paper again.”

“Last spring, it was of course clear to us as the ED that it had been wet for weeks, that streams were overflowing everywhere, and that lots of basements, gardens and fields were under water. But sometimes news doesn’t blow up until you make it visible in all its magnitude, which is why we launched the Flooding Hotline at the beginning of June. A week later, we had received over 300 reports, which made it painfully clear that this was much bigger than anyone had thought. Some of the reports mentioned whole streets being flooded, so we knew this wasn’t affecting hundreds of people, but thousands. It was a small ‘silent disaster’ that not only caused a lot of material damage, but also had a huge impact on people’s mental health. Like Rien and Antoinette Gijsbers, an 80-year-old couple who hadn’t left their house for four months because they were afraid the pump would stop working. “We can’t even take a day trip, let alone go on holiday, and we’re both 80 years old! We’re sick and tired of it.”

As promised, we anonymised the reports and shared our findings with the De Dommel water board and local municipalities. The reactions we received ranged from curt to – in the case of De Dommel – downright pissy. But the response we got from our readers was heartwarming. The hotline and our stories had finally made them feel heard.”

In March 2024, Russia’s hybrid warfare became visible to the whole world when hackers managed to take over a Ukrainian TV station.

The hack also disrupted other channels broadcasting from the same satellite, including BabyTV, a children’s channel included in the supplementary packages of TV providers in the Netherlands and many other countries. As a result, Russian propaganda videos were shown on the channel several times in March and April of 2024.

“I received a tip from a NU.nl reader who said that she had seen something strange on BabyTV,” says tech reporter Tim Wijkman-van Aalst. “She also included a video, and I immediately saw that the signal had been taken over.”

Thanks to his previous experience working in the telecom sector, Tim was able to quickly establish lines of communication with distributors and satellite providers. “When I started calling around to find out what was happening, the initial reaction was one of disbelief. Everyone I spoke to thought it was impossible that the satellite signal had been hacked. But that’s exactly what happened, and it hit the TV world like a bomb.”

For NU.nl, the BabyTV hack was one of the biggest news stories of the year. It was even picked up by the international media, as hybrid warfare had never been so visible before.

Voor de verhalende podcast De gestolen kinderen dook Petra Vissers bijna twee jaar lang in de bizarre wereld van buitenlandse adopties. “Dit onderzoek is dankzij Mirjam Hunze gestart, die in 1972 uit Chili werd geadopteerd”, vertelt Vissers. “Mirjam groeide op in Lunteren en ging als puber op zoek naar haar biologische familie. Na een zoektocht van twintig jaar vond ze die eindelijk, dankzij een Nederlandse non die in Chili een kindertehuis runde. Maar wat in eerste instantie een familiereünie leek, eindigde in een drama.”

Met dat drama begint de podcast. “Maar het onderzoek bracht zo veel meer naar boven dan alleen Mirjams verhaal. Ik heb heel vaak gedacht: dit kan toch niet écht waar zijn?! Bijna iedereen die ik interviewde, had wel een bijzonder verhaal of een aparte persoonlijkheid. Er is ook veel meer gelogen en verdraaid dan ik van tevoren had kunnen bedenken.”

Haar reis naar Chili, begin 2023, vond ze het bijzonderst. “Ik denk nog vaak terug aan de opmerkelijke ontmoetingen die Daan Hofstee – met wie ik de podcast maakte – en ik daar hadden. Bijvoorbeeld met de geadopteerde Miguel, die na de hereniging met zijn biologische familie naar Chili is verhuisd en daar al een jaar bij zijn zus woonde, terwijl hij amper Spaans spreekt. Ik vond het heel mooi om te zien hoe hij de verre van ideale omstandigheden accepteerde, omdat zó graag bij zijn moeder en zus wilde zijn.”

“Last spring, it was of course clear to us as the ED that it had been wet for weeks, that streams were overflowing everywhere, and that lots of basements, gardens and fields were under water. But sometimes news doesn’t blow up until you make it visible in all its magnitude, which is why we launched the Flooding Hotline at the beginning of June. A week later, we had received over 300 reports, which made it painfully clear that this was much bigger than anyone had thought. Some of the reports mentioned whole streets being flooded, so we knew this wasn’t affecting hundreds of people, but thousands. It was a small ‘silent disaster’ that not only caused a lot of material damage, but also had a huge impact on people’s mental health. Like Rien and Antoinette Gijsbers, an 80-year-old couple who hadn’t left their house for four months because they were afraid the pump would stop working. “We can’t even take a day trip, let alone go on holiday, and we’re both 80 years old! We’re sick and tired of it.”

As promised, we anonymised the reports and shared our findings with the De Dommel water board and local municipalities. The reactions we received ranged from curt to – in the case of De Dommel – downright pissy. But the response we got from our readers was heartwarming. The hotline and our stories had finally made them feel heard.”

“What do you say to the person who killed your little brother?” Naomi asks with tears in her eyes. Her heartbreaking testimony in the Maastricht District Court is covered in detail in the fourth episode of De Zaak XL: Donny M.

In this true crime podcast, Chris van Mersbergen, Raymond Boere, Sanne Beijer and Thomas Brouwer take listeners inside the courtroom to follow the trial of the man who admitted to kidnapping, abusing and murdering nine-year-old Gino.

De Zaak XL, which provided daily updates on the trial, was streamed 667,000 times.

Raymond and Chris have been covering the case since Gino went missing in 2022. The idea for a podcast series featuring audio recordings from the courtroom was born in the summer of 2024. “We wanted to break down this complex case for our listeners,” Thomas explains, “and give them an insight into how the judge reached her verdict.”

“The episode where we talked to Donny M.’s girlfriend at the time was really special,” Chris adds. “We visited her regularly over the past two and a half years, always with the understanding that the information she provided was in safe hands with us. After a gruelling week in court, she sent us a message saying she was ready to share her story with the world. The fact that she was also willing to come on the podcast says something about the trust we were able to build up over time.”