“Public broadcasting is available for everyone, of whatever colour and age”, vide the Media Act. The NPO’s concession policy plan 2016–2020, entitled “Het publiek voorop” [“The public first”], also mentions pluriformity and diversity as two key values of broadcasting policy: “NPO’s media brands aim to offer to its audience a balanced picture of the society and diverse set of beliefs, opinions and interests among the population in the social and cultural field” (NPO, 2015: 70). In aiming towards a proportional representation of ethnic minorities, quota agreements were created in the past (e.g., 11%, proportional to the percentage in the population). Such an ethnic minority quota was later dismissed. In line with its performance agreement (Rijksoverheid, 2017: 7), NPO aims to represent people with a non-Western migration background in a balanced way as a way to mitigate prejudices against them. In their book Heb je een boze moslim voor mij? [Got an angry Muslim for me?], Annebregt Dijkman and Zoë Papaikonomou (2018) criticise the lack of cultural and religious diversity in newsrooms of current affairs programmes, which – they argue – leads to unidimensional, often negative portrayals of certain groups. Like these authors, Shashi Roopman (quoted by Mercita Coronel in an interview published in dekanttekening.nl in December 2019), the editor of Up! Network NL, a right-wing online media platform, is convinced about the importance of diversity in the media, but his interpretation is different. In his view, ethnic representation is limited to a number of ethnic groups (Turks, Moroccans, Africans) and framed through a predominantly left-wing orientation: linking ethnicity automatically with the left-wing political frame. Conversely, right-wing broadcasters PowNed and Wij Nederland have joined the “left-wing” public broadcasting system. Ongehoord Nederland [Unheard Dutch] has come forward as an aspiring broadcaster. Other initiatives aimed at improving diversity in the newsroom relate to attracting news columnists by newspapers as well as the conscious decision of the correspondent to make its editorial staff less homogeneous. Public broadcaster NPO operates FunX Radio. While it was planning to add a sub channel called Turkpop to FunX Radio to reach youngsters and young adults with a Turkish migration background, the then State secretary Sander Dekker vetoed this. He argued that it would conflict with NPO’s mandate to connect the populations (Ministerie van OCW, 2015). The days of target-group television are over, but no structural alternative has emerged in its place. Therefore, a key question remains on whether cultural diversity and a diversity of opinion can be found in the programmes of the mainstream media.
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