Is the end of 'Spoorloos' also the end of a TV era?

A mother and a daughter jump into each other and look deep into each other. The tears of the mother do not seem to stop, they grab each other even more firmly. The daughter strokes her mother's head with a broad smile. In this episode from 2001, the TV program Trace -free The biological mother of 19-year-old Marthainès de Vries detected. But as it turned out after 23 years: it is one big play. The so -called mother from Colombia knew all the time that De Vries was not her daughter.

After De Vries announced in February that she continued Trace -free The wrong mother was linked, Omroep KRO-NCRV decided to take the plug from the utility. It decision has been taken to prevent the victims from being confronted with the program. Since 1990 linked Trace -free More than eight hundred participants in their biological families.

The now 43-year-old De Vries was no longer able to meet her real mother, because her mother died in the meantime. A year and a half ago it was also announced that the program adopted their biological parents to the wrong families. Eight of these kinds of mismatches are already known. Until 2019, the program did not do a standard DNA study. A number of victims went to court last year. On March 6, the first hearing is where witnesses are heard, including former presenter of Trace -free Derk Bolt, editors and journalist Kees van der Spek: he unveiled a mismatch in 2022.

Shortly after the decision of Trace -free announced the TV program DNA unknown also to stop. According to Omroep AVROTROS not because of mismatches, but because the times have changed and there are many opportunities for people to do DNA research themselves. In the last episode, two sisters and a brother wonder if they have the same father. What turns out? Thanks to a quick and easy DNA test, they get to know that their father is simply their father.

Almost every public broadcaster has a tool. The EO dissolves familyags during The Family DinnerMax submits neighborly quarrels to The moving judgeNTR sends young people who are stuck in the school system to the Dream School and BNNVARA helps teenage mothers in Four hands on one belly. These types of programs usually offer help to vulnerable people who are desperate. With that they go into a gray area: is it more about the viewing figures than the social interest?

Romantic

Ten years ago Trace -free About two million viewers. The last episode had fewer than half a million viewers. According to viewing figure analyst Tina Nijkamp, ​​utilities are no longer of this time. “The editors of Trace -free had to be private detectives while they were not trained at all. The program also serves more as an entertainment than it contributes to information; Something like that does not fit with the public broadcaster, « says Nijkamp. She wonders why Trace -free Not much earlier the knot made. Certainly because there was a scandal in 2022 and the viewing figures have been drastically back since then, she says.

“As the mission of Trace -free It was actually to unite people, then the abrupt stop is not well thought out. Then they should continue and adjust their methodology, « says Girma Segaar, external strategic adviser at Inea, the Dutch Expertise Center for international adoption. He helps set up sustainable search infrastructures in countries of origin.

But mixing television and searches does entail a fundamental conflict of interest, says Segaar. According to him, adopted people can suffer from the romantic image of adoption that Trace -free has created. « They give a nuanced picture of adoption and that has negative effects on the adoption landscape. Trace -free creates the image that there is always a good ending with a match.  » The viewing of the search, with or without a match, is therefore much more important, he thinks.

Segaar: « Trace -free Should be more about setting up the search process instead of the result. If they focus on the stigma around adoption, it would not be a problem if not so many matches came out. ” He also believes that the mission of the program has not yet been completed. “If Trace -free Families want to reunite abroad, then broadcasting in the Netherlands would not be useful. It would be useful to send the program in places where the biological families are located to reach more people. ”

Glimmer of hope

When he was another child, gave Trace -free Segaar himself « a spark of hope » to meet his biological parents. In 2001, as a 7-year-old he sent several letters to the program asking if they can find his real parents. « Unfortunately they did not do matches in Ethiopia, » says Segaar. He decided to look for himself in his teenage years – with the support of his Dutch adoptive parents. Via the Ethiopian radio program Fana he thought he had found his mother. He was told that she had died and he thought this for fourteen years. After the mismatch he decided to do DNA investigations and found his real mother. They met for the first time in 2022 in the Ethiopian TV program Kedame Kesat (Saturday afternoon).

Seeking help with a TV program is often a last resort for people. As for family reunification: do a DNA test yourself or sending your potential mother a message via Facebook seems simple, says Segaar, but it is not. « Social media are enormously invasive for the biological family. It can have a negative impact on the possibility of building a healthy relationship. The way they are found and approached is very important. « 

Viewing grade analyst Nijkamp sometimes experiences deputy shame in people participating in aid programs, especially at The moving judge. According to her, people do not see the consequences of revealing their personal suffering on TV, and they should be protected against themselves. « The candidates are easy to find online nowadays, » she says. « It used to be a one -off broadcast, but now the excerpts of their problems can be seen on Tiktok of YouTube. » Nijkamp believes that people can be helped better without a camera being on them.

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