Dutch Journalists Research Articles

"Merdeka"! and the dynamics of extreme violence; The first year of the Indonesian Revolution through the eyes of three Dutch journalists

In the first year after World War II, there was a power vacuum in Indonesia. The Indonesians had declared their independence. The Allies had assigned the administration of the former Dutch colony to the British. The Dutch thought they could continue their colonial ambitions. It was a year of utter chaos and extreme violence. While most Dutch journalists remained in Jakarta, three went to the war zones: two of them as reporters and the other as a soldier. The analysis of three texts on the first year of the Indonesian War of Independence by Dutch eyewitnesses shows the importance of subjecting them to closer scrutiny. In the massive focus on the violence in the Indonesian freedom struggle, literary texts of this kind are too often not taken into consideration, even though they are crucial to gaining an insight into the thinking about this war at that time. Because of their hybrid nature, this type of text is pre-eminent in revealing the tension between clashing conceptions, realities, and truths.

Journalists’ Apprehension of Being Politically Correct: A Source of Racial Stereotyping of Street Harassment Perpetrators in the Press

ABSTRACT While racialized stereotyping in mass media is well-documented, sociological analysis of the journalistic practices and norms contributing to the production of such representations remains underdeveloped. We study these by analyzing media reporting on street harassment in the Netherlands, which frequently mentioned the racialized profiles of perpetrators. Existing research has proposed two major causes of racialized stereotyping in the press: (1) journalists’ passive and unreflective reproduction of popular racialized stereotypes and (2) commercialization of the press as favoring the provocative racialized discourse of right-wing populists. Based on content analysis of press coverage and interviews with Dutch journalists and the actors they reported on—politicians, activists, and others involved in the public problem of street harassment—we identify apprehension of political correctness as a third cause of racialized framings in the press. Specifically, we show how many journalists considered addressing the question of whether racialized men are overrepresented as perpetrators to be a way of avoiding complicity with politicians and other powerful actors who allegedly avoid sensitive questions about race and migration. This article proposes a theory of “apprehension of political correctness” as a contribution to scholarship on journalistic practice and racialized stereotyping in the press.

Not All Parties are Treated Equally Journalist Perceptions of Partisan News Bias

ABSTRACT Journalists and news media in Western democracies appear to be under increasing fire for having an alleged partisan bias. This study joins the increasing number of studies on partisan news slant, and focuses on the central actors in the news-making process, namely journalists themselves. Drawing on unique survey evidence on 233 Belgian and Dutch journalists in 2018, this study explores whether and which journalists perceive their news outlets to be biased. Despite their aim to produce impartial coverage, we find that most journalists believe that their news outlet favors some parties over others. In particular, journalists feel that center parties are favored, while parties on the fringes, and especially extreme-right parties, are somewhat disadvantaged. Also, it shows that journalists working for the public broadcaster perceive their outlet to be more impartial than their colleagues working for commercial outlets. Journalists’ political leaning does not seem to influence their perceptions of partisan bias, but journalists do feel that their outlet is biased to accommodate its “imagined audience”. For instance, those who perceive their audience as more right-wing than the general public, feel that their medium advantages right-wing parties too.

A cream pie with rat poison. La Madone in the Netherlands

Shortly after the publication of La Madone des sleepings in 1925, Maurice Dekobra became a household name among Dutch readers and critics. By mapping the critical reception of Dekobra’s novel in the Netherlands, this article explores the attitudes of Dutch journalists and critics towards popular French literature during the interwar period. Which conceptions of literature and culture were involved and which institutional interests were at stake? What does the reception of Dekobra reveal about the conditions of the Dutch literary field?

Robotisering: het kan, maar moet het ook?

Computerization and employment Computerization and employment In this debate section of the journal, the editorial board asked informed researchers to reflect on the current debates on the way in which computerization substitutes human labour. Similar to the study by Frey and Osborne (2013), some Dutch journalists predicted that many jobs in the near future are susceptible to being replaced by technology, due to continuing computerization. The researchers in this section argue, from different perspectives, that the relation between computerization and employment is far more complex, as past studies on technology already indicate. In order to get better insight into this relationship it is not sufficient to only study whether some tasks or jobs can be computerized. Next to this technical perspective, it is also important to include economic, social and ethical perspectives and study how new technology is being used, what choices can be made and how desirable it is to develop policies to deal with the possible effects. Asking different questions from different perspectives is a promising way to strengthen the debate and move away from the unilateral and dark scenarios as presented by Frey and Osborne, because there are many opportunities for decision makers to influence the effects of new technology on employment.

De diversiteitsparadox: Over de veranderende relatie tussen journalistiek en etnisch-culturele diversiteit

The piversity paradox. Analyzing the changing relation between journalism and cultural diversity. The piversity paradox. Analyzing the changing relation between journalism and cultural diversity. In this article we study the relationship between journalistic practice and the ideals of diversity and multiculturalism. By means of interviews with 61 Dutch journalists we demonstrate that the journalist’s practice is dominated by a ‘diversity paradox’. On the one hand, journalists seem to collectively reject the idea that ethnic minorities should receive a special treatment by the news media. Yet, on the other hand, the same journalists choose to explicitly name (issues related to) diversity when it comes to bad news. The analysis of the transcribed interviews shows that, even though journalists feel a certain responsibility towards covering diversity, in daily practice this ideal can easily conflict with other journalistic norms and values. As a result, in their everyday routines, the place of diversity is not determined by these (conflicting) journalistic ideals but rather by contextual factors such as personal preferences and time constraints.

El periodismo holandés en la era digital

With an ever-growing supply of online sources, information to produce news stories seems to be one mouse click away. But in what way do Dutch journalists actually use computer-aided research tools? This article provides an inventory of the ways journalists use digital (re)sources and explores the differences between experts and novices. We applied a combined methodological approach by conducting an ethnographic study as well as a survey. Results show that Dutch journalists use relatively few digital tools to find online information. However, journalists who can be considered as experts in the field of information retrieval use a wider range of search engines and techniques, arrive quicker at the angle to their story, and were better at finding information related to this angle. This allowed them to spend more time on writing their news story. Novices ended up more dependent on the information provided by others.

‘A Newspaper War’?: Dutch Information Networks during the South African War (1899-1902)

The South African War (1899-1902) caused a stir in the Netherlands. The Dutch public overwhelmingly supported the Boers in their struggle against the British. To support the ‘kinsmen’ in South Africa several organisations in the Netherlands embarked on an international propaganda campaign. This article considers the involvement of Dutch journalists in the pro-Boer agitation. They were confronted with a dilemma because as a small country the Netherlands officially was neutral and did not possess strong international lines of communications, which made it difficult to distribute information in other countries. This problem raised moral and practical questions about the Dutch press and its position in the world. Using concepts from the historiography on the media of the British Empire, Kuitenbrouwer analyses the Dutch press system around 1900. This article is part of the special issue 'A New Dutch Imperial History'.

To check or not to check: An exploratory study on source checking by Dutch journalists

Verifying information is one of the core activities of journalism, however recent research shows many stories derive from unchecked information from news agencies and PR material. That being said, reporters who do not use this pre-packaged material, but who instead produce original stories based on independent research, might be journalists who stay devoted to the verification of information. Therefore, this study focuses on in-depth stories that originated inside the newsroom. We expected that these kinds of stories would be checked and double-checked, because time constraints are less important and these stories are characteristic of independent, quality journalism. Contrary to this expectation, the results show that even these kinds of stories are not always vetted. The lack of time was seldom mentioned as an excuse. Our research points to avoidance mechanisms which inhibit journalists from verifying their information.

TWITTER LINKS BETWEEN POLITICIANS AND JOURNALISTS

This article analyses a Twitter network of 150 Dutch journalists and politicians in 2010 and shows that Twitter networks have an underlying structure that is more detailed than one would expect from a simple list of followers and following. In-Degree (followers) measures a users' popularity as a news source and Out-Degree (following) measures openness and newsgathering by users and give insights into the structure of this underlying network. Also, the bridging function—being a hub or link—in this network can be clearly identified, and shows how important a person is as a networker. Ego Network analysis may specify these positions and reveal how a single user has links and bridges to central network positions. From the network connections on Twitter between politicians and journalists it cannot be concluded that there is a closed elite like a fully connected group of users controlling information. Journalists and politicians are mutually dependent on each other and how this dependency is constructed is shown by various network centrality measures, specifying their role (source versus news gatherer) and position in the network (being a networker or not). Consociationalism used to be one of the main characteristics of the Dutch political and media structures. Twitter network analysis on a sub-group level shows that contacts on Twitter between reporters and politicians are no longer influenced by religious or ideological identity of parties and media. Finding news and spreading news is the driving force in the Twitter network between politicians and journalists.

How newspaper journalists reframe product press release information

Newspaper journalism is said to increasingly depend on PR sources and news agencies. However, news production evolves in several phases. There may be considerable source dependency in the news discovery phase, but sources may be less prominent in the later phases of news gathering and news writing. This study concentrates on the last two phases and analyzes how Dutch journalists rework product launch press releases into newspaper reports. Forty-nine pairs of releases and news reports were analyzed sentence by sentence. Compared to press releases, news reports provide less product or company information and more contextual information, provide less positive and more negative evaluations, and more often attribute information to sources. Overall, less than half of the information in the reports originates from the releases. A framing analysis learns that while releases adopt an advertising frame focused on selling the product, reports offer two kinds of reframing: they regularly recontextualize the release information by adding consumer information and occasionally reconceptualize the launch as a business move. Both the distancing operations and the reframings enhance the report’s usability to news consumers. However, radical transformations are rare: most reframings occur later on in the report and the primary frame of the source text is often left in place.

Journalism of attachment and objectivity: Dutch journalists and the Bosnian War

The civil war in Bosnia has been one of the most brutal periods in European post-war history. Dutch media played an important role in creating a rather stereotypical, simplified picture of the Bosnian conflict, and, as a consequence, also of what the Dutch government could do within an international context to solve it. The reasons the media created this simplified and stereotypical picture can be found in the phenomenon of `journalism of attachment'. This form of journalism regards reporters as participants in the conflicts they report, taking part in the public debate about the conflict. Using a content analysis of the news coverage about the Bosnian war we found that journalists covering the Bosnian war show attachment in the news coverage whether openly in the straight news articles or in a more subtle way, through the use of opportune witnesses.

Dutch public relations practitioners and journalists: Antagonists no more

The increasing interdependence of public relations and journalism and the demands they make on each other raise the question how they perceive and evaluate each other. How do they view their roles, methods, relationship, and quality of media reporting on organizations? How do government and business public relations differ in this respect? Our survey of a representative sample of Dutch journalists and public relations practitioners in both government and business ( n = 791) showed that while there were differences of opinion between the two professions, these were neither predominantly negative nor fundamental. Our results, therefore, do not confirm the difficult relationship between the press and public relations that was identified in research carried out in the United States between 1970 and 1990. Given the Dutch tradition that the government practitioner be a neutral servant of the public interest rather than a spokesperson for the organization, the general absence of differences between government and business public relations was striking. Our findings indicate that government public relations professionals have adopted the same norms and standards as their colleagues in business organizations.

Enclaves van leed en werkelijkheid; wiens trauma is 'Srebrenica' eigenlijk?

R. van den Boogaard, Zilverstad. De Haagse verduistering van het drama-SrebrenicaC. Banning, P. de Koning, Balkan aan de Noordzee. Over het Joegoslavië-tribunaal, over recht en onrechtH. Praamsma, J. Peekel, T. Boumans, Herinneringen aan Srebrenica. 171 SoldatengesprekkenE. Suljagic, E. Vulliamy, L. Haveric, Postcards from the grave, afterword by Vulliamy, E., translated by L. HavericL.P.C. Ruigrok, Journalism of attachment. Dutch newspapers during the Bosnian warA. van Loon, Vrouwen van SrebrenicaJ. VanIerberghe, Kroniek van onmacht. Sarajevo, Srebrenica... tien jaar later Bob de Graaff, Enclaves of truth and anguish; whose trauma is ‘Srebrenica’ anyway? In 2005,ten years after the fall of the so-called ‘safearea’ of Srebrenica where a Dutch UN-battalion had been deployed to deter a Serb attack on the Bosnian Muslim enclave, several books were published on the war in Bosnia-Herzogovina (1992-1995). These publications examined the war’s aftermath and the way in which people came to terms with it. The author shows how the different groups involved in the tragedy at the time Bosnian Muslims and Dutch politicians, journalists and soldiers – all had their own separate ways of committing their pain to memory, there by giving the impression that each one of them had a monopoly on the truth and that their traumatic experience was unique.

National News Cultures: A Comparison of Dutch, German, British, Australian, and U.S. Journalists

This paper compares the main data findings of a survey among Dutch journalists with results from recent projects in more or less similar countries: Germany, Great Britain, Australia, and the United States. The paper critically discusses existing published cross-national research. The cross-national comparison is used as a means to describe and interpret a national news culture of journalists using The Netherlands as a case study.

Occupational Activities of Dutch Journalists in a Television Newsroom

The purpose of this paper is to gain a better understanding of the process that takes place when individuals act in their occupational role as journalist. Aspects which play a role in a journalist's professional activities are studied in the context of the daily practice of the production of news. This process involves value-judgments made by journalists, through which events are given a specific meaning. However, news making is not an individual affair. Journalists work for an audience, they are members of an occupational group with professional values, and they work within the constraints of a news organization. In this study, an action theoretical framework was used to study the journalist. According to the action theory journalists perceive and interpret information within a professional stock of knowledge and relevance structure. The global research question was: which shared meaning schemes and reality constructs underlie the occupational activities of television news journalists? Data were gathered by observations made in the newsroom of the Dutch public channels' news program, the NOS-journaal, and through interviews conducted with people working in this newsroom. Results show that journalists work in a news organization that has a strong hierarchical structure. Depending on the difference in responsibility and in the specific position journalists occupy in the news organization, journalists interpret en define situations differently. This process of construction of meaning seems to be rooted in different, but shared perspectives that journalists use to make their daily decisions.

A Comparison of Attitudes About Social Responsibility Among Dutch and American Journalists and Lawmakers

A Comparison of Attitudes About Social Responsibility Among Dutch and American Journalists and Lawmakers