Mergers and acquisitions reshaped the Dutch media landscape in the last decade. Strikingly, more media titles and brands are held by one and the same owner compared with 2009, leading to a higher risk of influence of power and conflict of interests. For instance, in 2009, RTL Nederland was also partly held by Talpa media, but is now fully owned by the RTL Group. Earlier, Talpa Media and Mecom owned the Telegraaf Media Groep, but since 2018, 99.5 per cent of its shares are held by Mediahuis. The last example is that of Talpa Network, created by John de Mol, who set up Talpa Holding NV to host all his media activities, mainly focusing on radio and television (having sold all shares in newspapers). Since 2018, John de Mol also owns the Dutch news agency ANP. An exception in this concentration trend is the FD Mediagroep: controlled (98%) by HAL Holding, it owns both Het Financieele Dagblad and BNR Nieuwsradio.
Some of the journalists we interviewed indicated that the high level of media ownership concentration (see Indicators E1 & E2 – Media ownership concentration national and regional (local) levels) is making it more difficult for journalists and especially freelancers to move from one media company to another, if the latter is owned by the same company. However, our interviewees denied any direct influence of owners over the journalistic daily routines (see Indicator F6 – Company rules against external influence on newsroom/editorial staff).
