The Flemish media regulator, Vlaamse Regulator voor de Media (VRM), provides an annual report on the tendencies of ownership concentration. It thereby assesses the Flemish media market almost uniquely based on economical parameters, without studying or taking into account news media content. VRM checks if media companies adhere to media decrees and regulations set out by the Flemish government and fines companies that do not do so. While the current Flemish media minister has announced that VRM might be allowed to analyse news media content, no concrete follow-up on this initiative was observed at the time of writing.
In another, perhaps more worrying, trend, VRM could in the near future also be qualified to analyse the impartiality policy of public broadcaster VRT, after right-wing critics consistently remarked that VRT would allegedly lean too much towards the left in offering viewpoints and actors. While no concrete action on this has been taken either, singling out the public broadcaster to ensure fair and balanced representation of (political) opinions could be a worrying stepping-stone towards indirect government control over public broadcasting, thereby damaging its editorial independence. However, this does not necessarily mean that the public broadcaster should not hold itself to the highest standards in this domain.
Looking at gender, no specific regulations to ensure a balance between male and female actors in the news exist. Public broadcaster VRT is the only news corporation to have imposed quotas – requiring 40 per cent of all “appearances” across its channels to be female and 7.5 per cent so-called “new Flemings”, or people with foreign backgrounds – but this is not solely applicable to news. Other Flemish media companies are not obliged to adhere to such quotas, let alone publish or make accessible to the wider public findings of internal studies and analyses. VRT annually publishes its Diversiteitsmonitor [Diversity monitor], for which its own research unit collaborates with universities to verify if the variously imposed quotas are achieved. For 2020, they have, with a 41.2 per cent share of all “appearances” for women and 8.3 per cent for “new Flemings” (VRT, 2020).
