So let’s analyse the traditional media platforms, I’m using mediamonitor.nl.
We have NPO: Nederlandse Publieke Omroep – This is government funded (tax money) media
The part that annoys me is this. The NPO (funded with taxpayer money) does not ever use ‘clickable sources’. Give me an article, sorry it is more a message, because an article has 1000 to 3000 words. You obviously have the budget. You’re just enormously lazy.
We have Bertelsmann: this is private German owned media conglomerate. They operate under the RTL
Then we have TALPA owned by one of the richest (selfmade) families (de Mol) in the Netherlands. Let me be clear, I respect the hustle of this family, they earned this. I could not find much, besides this. But the articles, more messages, from this company are also really bad.
Then we have DPG Media. So my parents are subscribers to one of their brands. I find it bad journalism to be honest. It is written from a subjective point of view, again without sources a lot of times. The problem is they add towards the polarisation of the Netherlands, in my opinion. For example the published a cover of a well-known data scientist in the Netherlands. This man called Maurice de Hond published cold hard data from world wide about the covid-19 on his website. Then this newspaper makes him out to be the Jew that pulls the strings, absolutely disgusting. Obviously they have the right to publish but it shows how polarising this newspaper truly is. The rest of media from DPG Media is below average. One of their directors admitted in an interview (below) that they would completely follow the Dutch government narrative with covid-19. I get that, he has is a blind belief in the dutch government, these people exist.
Then we have Mediahuis. It is a Belgium owned media company.
These companies also have the nerve to do act as fact checkers, while their reporting is below average, subjective and like I said without any sources in the articles or below the articles. I don’t care if you have 1,2,3,4,5 master degrees and or a PhD, I want to see sources. Don’t hide behind ‘this is an opinion piece’. Don’t give me: “my sources are a secret”, up to a point you have used public information to build a story, share those.
The problem is not that that I don’t trust it, it is that have to check certain really sensitive information, like EAU vaccine, Politics, Climate for myself. Because all those subject have become politicized. I want to have the honest numbers.