Management crisis in the Municipality of Roosendaal due to misconduct by executive councillor

How do you deal with anonymous sources in a delicate matter?

Journalists frequently receive tips about misconduct and try to establish the facts, by submitting a Woo (Open Government Act) request, for instance. If that is not possible, a story based on anonymous sources may be necessary. But when is that allowed?

n executive councillor who suddenly resigns because she “feels unsafe” as a result of the behaviour of “some fellow councillors”; this is something that we, as regional reporters, don’t often experience. Within a few days, the departure of Sanneke Vermeulen, executive councillor for the VVD party, led to a major management crisis this year within the Municipality of Roosendaal, which I follow for BN DeStem.

With the help of more than 12 anonymous sources, we then managed to do within two days what had failed in the previous months: prove that another executive councillor (Arwen van Gestel of the local VLP party) had been misbehaving towards colleagues for some time. After we had given him the opportunity to reply to our publication, he decided to resign with immediate effect.

In recent years, I had often received reports about Van Gestel from tip-off sources. But it remained incredibly difficult to get those directly involved to talk about the situation. Officials do not like to leak information, particularly if it is possible for the employer to trace who has spoken.

This is why we submitted a Woo (Open Government Act) request in the spring. But this did not confirm enough in our view. There were emails, a factual report and advice about a conflict between Van Gestel and an official, but we were not allowed to see the contents. According to the local authority, even anonymised, the information would encroach too much on the “personal privacy” of those involved.

Officials do not like to leak information, particularly if it is possible for the employer to trace who has spoken

But when Vermeulen contacted us within six months with the message that she would be leaving because of “an unsafe work environment”, it was not difficult to guess what had caused this. Maybe people would now be willing to talk, even it was anonymously.

We explicitly asked our readers for tips in all our publications on the matter.

In doing so, we also made use of the whistleblower platform ‘Publeaks’, where people can share information with the press completely anonymously. This resulted in us receiving dozens of tips, all of which, with a few exceptions, were about Van Gestel.

Things really took off when, within 24 hours of Vermeulen’s departure, we were able to confirm that Van Gestel had pressured the VVD party’s board to force Vermeulen to resign. Thanks to a reliable tip-off source very close to the Municipal Executive, we were able to confirm the majority of the stories.

We now had at least 12 sources that we considered to be very reliable, but they were all anonymous. Given the number of tips, the severity of the facts that we could substantiate and because of their current news value, we felt justified in going ahead with the publication. We gave Van Gestel more than four hours to respond. He instead chose to announce his resignation.

Letter of resignation

The danger of a publication like this, based on anonymous information, is that the reader will come to see the reporter as the one making the accusations. It is of course true that the article was not complete: people who had good experiences with Van Gestel will not have come forward as tip-off sources. In matters such as this in which intimidation and insults are involved, those who did come forward inevitably have a personal interest as well.

Were we being used to divert attention from her own poor performance?

In addition, there were major political interests in deciding what information would and would not make it into our columns. This is one of the reasons that we were immediately suspicious of Vermeulen’s letter of resignation. Were we being used to divert attention from her own poor performance? There had been rumours about that for some time and it was an open secret that the relationship with her own party was difficult, to say the least.

We had immediately confronted her with critical questions on this. And in the period after her resignation, we worked hard to get to the bottom of that side of the story. This was once again possible with the help of anonymous but reliable sources.

Freek Lieve Verhulst

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luisteren

A regional podcast with nationwide exposure

You don’t necessarily have to be in Amsterdam or The Hague for a good journalistic story with nationwide impact. Rijsbergen is also an excellent location to achieve this, as we noticed over the past year.

Our podcast ‘De Erfenis van Engel’ (Engel’s Legacy) not only attracted a lot of attention and listeners in West Brabant, but also far beyond. It resulted in nationwide exposure for this subject matter. For those who do not immediately recognise the name Engel: Cees Engel was the eccentric owner of the most notorious campsite in the Netherlands, Fort Oranje in Rijsbergen. It was a hotbed of crime, social misery and prostitution. Cees is also the father of Willem Engel, the Dutch activist who founded the controversial organisation Viruswaarheid.

The mission was a success: highlighting the story of the Engel family and Fort Oranje from as many angles as possible.

Reason enough for us at BN DeStem to reflect proudly on what was a new kind of project for our editorial team. And substantiation that regional journalism can have nationwide impact.

André Trompers

Editor-in-chief of BN DeStem

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More contact with the public via the pop-up editorial team

Project teams are trying to resuscitate a neighbourhood in Breda with bags of money. You would think this is much needed if you read the reports on our app, website or in the newspaper. Firework riots on New Year’s Eve, explosions at schools – this is not one of the city’s best neighbourhoods.

But is it really that bad in Hoge Vucht, a neighbourhood in the north of Breda? Our conclusion during an editorial team meeting was that we don’t actually know. Our reporters don’t have a large network there. The neighbourhood consists of a number of closed multicultural communities.

What if we were to embrace the neighbourhood for a longer period of time? We decided to establish a pop-up editorial team. We were welcome in the community centre and that is where our reporters did their work. Every day for three weeks under the heading ‘Hier Hoge Vucht’. The goal: to determine what is going well in the neighbourhood and what could be improved. It has resulted in warm encounters and constructive articles. People living in the neighbourhood approach us every day to tell us their stories about the neighbourhood. Valuable stories for the short term, but above all an investment in lasting contacts.

It has been the impetus at BN DeStem for more contact with the public. A pop-up editorial team in a recently renovated neighbourhood in Bergen op Zoom, a weekly walk-in session in Dongen, a walk-in session in Sint Willebrord, an interactive cycling holiday throughout the region, etc. To be continued in 2025.