Police threats overshadow brutality: Dutch media tactic under scrutiny

The Dutch police are employing a communication strategy that critics say distracts from incidents of police misconduct by immediately introducing a secondary narrative: that officers are being threatened. This approach, exemplified by recent events, aims to create a false sense of balance and shift public perception.

Following an incident where a pregnant woman was thrown to the ground by an officer in an asylum center, media headlines quickly focused on "threats against police on social media." Similarly, after footage emerged of an officer assaulting a woman in Utrecht, coverage highlighted the officer receiving "threats" and going into hiding with his family.

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That a police officer is threatened says nothing about the incident that is the cause of that threat.

The article argues that this tactic is problematic because the threats against officers, however serious, are irrelevant to the original incident of police brutality. It draws a parallel to the "Blue Lives Matter" counter-movement in the US responding to Black Lives Matter, suggesting it serves to dilute the focus on police accountability.

By juxtaposing police violence with aggression against police, the narrative is "balanced" on the surface, but the underlying issue of police misconduct is obscured. The piece contends that while threats are concerning, they are not inherently newsworthy, especially when they serve as a deflection from a primary story of police misbehavior. This strategy, the article suggests, is used to manage the narrative and present a more complex, less critical picture of police actions.

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The story is released to equalize the narrative: this might be bad, but this is also not okay.