You can’t measure impartiality (but you can do something about it)

Complaints about possible bias have been dropping in my mailbox for two years in a row. For the sake of clarity, I am talking about a citizen who thinks that VRT itself has shown partiality in its reporting. That complaint thus decreases slightly.

Although many people think of political reporting when bias is concerned, I get very few bias complaints about Wetstraat reporting. Partisan complaints are more often about foreign reporting and general reports on controversial topics, such as migration or global warming. Internal work has been going on for some time on impartiality in that area. Many people also find interruptions during studio debates and interviews very annoying and this is often seen as partial.

Despite elections in Belgium and the United States, however, the impartiality complaints seem to have decreased slightly over the course of my mandate (from 729 to 667 this year), while the contacts with the news ombudsman in general increase sharply (roughly from 5,600 last year to 13,000 this year). year).