CEO Delaplace: “VRT will not collaborate with Bart De Pauw”
VRT excludes any collaboration with Bart De Pauw in the future. CEO Frederik Delaplace said this in Terzake. “It would be very strange if a managing director would still want to work with Bart De Pauw, if he recently demanded 13 million euros in compensation from this house.” He was referring to the case between De Pauw and VRT. The first demanded compensation for the termination of the collaboration by VRT when the scandal surrounding De Pauw broke out.
Furthermore, Delaplace met Bart De Pauw “a maximum of four times”. Delaplace responded to the fact that he had been having conversations with De Pauw for two months without hearing from the victims. “Two months, that seems like we consulted with him for 60 days,” he said.
According to the CEO, he noted “that Bart De Pauw indicated that after a long time he was prepared to show his sense of guilt and apologize. And to stand up for the victims, who still suffer the consequences of the case and are bullied by the heroes of the internet.”
Delaplace says that he consulted with De Pauw about how they could organize that apology. That would have started from the idea of making a fourth episode The process that no one wanted, but the CEO says that production house Woestijnvis and documentary maker Tess Uyterhoeven were not open to that. Afterwards, the idea is said to have evolved into “direct conversations” between De Pauw and his victims “before VRT could do anything.” That evolution would have taken time, “and at that time the documentary was already in the broadcast schedule.” According to Delaplace, he wanted to “give the conversations opportunities” by deleting it. According to him, that turned out to be “an error of judgment.”
Presenter Kathleen Cools asked him whether it is the job of the CEO of a media company to act as a mediator in such a case. He did not answer that question. Delaplace then emphasized that he did not have the conversations alone. “A number of people within the organization have been involved from the start,” he says. However, according to information from De Standaard, this only concerns director of content Ricus Jansegers. His programming team was completely sidelined. Bart De Pauw himself also only refers to contacts with Delaplace and Jansegers in his Instagram post earlier this week.
