According to our academic interviewees, more staff and financial resources have been invested in media investigations of late, although no figures have been disclosed. Traditional news media have come to understand that in these times of freely accessible content, the need to be distinctive becomes that much more pressing, as indicated by our expert interviewee Jo Bardoel. According to Piet Bakker, so-called time or money constraints are poor excuses for an unwillingness to take a hard look at priorities. All journalists and editors-in-chief confirmed that resources could be, and are, made available for investigations. Overall, however, funds are limited. Teams are established and financed on an ad hoc basis. They are also based on subsidies such as those of the Fund for Special Journalistic Projects, which enables journalists and writers to set up projects of a special nature or quality. The fund seeks help to explore new angles based on which special news projects could be carried out.
Another subsidy fund is the Investigative Journalism Fund. It is intended to structurally strengthen the watchdog role of the news media by increasing the investigative journalism function in the Dutch newsrooms. No less than 75 per cent of its budget goes to regional or local news media because, as mentioned earlier, they are the most vulnerable of all. This explains the government’s decision to set up a temporary support fund for local and regional news media outlets in response to the current Covid-19 crisis (see “Covid-19” section). The other 25 per cent is allocated to national news media. An annual contribution of approximately EUR 5 million from the Ministry of Education, Culture, and Science goes to the Dutch Journalism Fund in a bid to share knowledge, facilitate research, and stimulate collaboration and innovation.
