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Research results show that news diversity in Flanders is decreasing. The cause, according to his research, is the concentration of media organisations in the Flemish news landscape. In recent years, Flemish newspapers belonging to the same media group have systematically shared more articles, reducing people’s access to different sources and opinions.
Hendrickx: "News media and journalists have a social obligation to inform citizens in a critical and diverse way. This allows them in turn to make well-considered decisions in the voting booth, for example. News diversity is thus linked to democracy. It is not yet a critical problem in Flanders, but vigilance is clearly still required."
Jonathan Hendrickx (VUB) spent four years studying the role and dominance of the two largest Flemish media companies, DPG Media and Mediahuis. Both companies came into being after large-scale mergers and takeovers, reducing the number of media companies active in Flanders from nine to five. In his research, Hendrickx focused on the direct and indirect consequences of media concentration and synergies within the merged companies on news production and content diversity. The results were obtained through comparative content analysis of newspaper and online articles , observation of newsrooms and interviews with journalists, sub-editors and editors-in-chief. For this purpose, he analysed more than 1 million articles and 100 working days of journalists at both media groups between 2017 and 2020. The content analysis looked at how many articles were copied by the same group and thus to what extent there is still sufficient diversity in reporting.
Regional recycling & physical proximity
The results of the study are mixed. For example, it appears that regional newspaper titles and their content have been scaled down the most at Mediahuis. At the same time, the content and especially the political news of the national newspaper De Standaard have become marginally more diverse. At DPG Media, articles from Het Laatste Nieuws and De Morgen have become much less diverse. Here, a clear focus was put on Het Laatste Nieuws as the largest news brand and more resources and people were made available for it.
Observations among journalists revealed how the practice of recycling news content has become part of the business model and the daily operations of media titles. For example, in recent years, various Flemish news editors have been placed in the same building to facilitate collaborations. Furthermore, they use the same software to publish articles, which allows for content sharing across different titles, and editors have implicit rules about whether they are allowed to copy articles or sources.
"Smaller media titles are in danger of being supplanted by larger ones, which puts increasing pressure on news diversity," says Hendrickx. "There are, of course, market conditions to be taken into account, which necessitate and enable such synergies. It is now crucial for the Flemish media to convert the savings made into further differentiation of the political, cultural and regional news in the remaining paper titles."
The World Needs You
The Vrije Universiteit Brussel assumes its scientific and social responsibility with love and decisiveness. That’s why VUB launched the platform De Wereld Heeft Je Nodig - The World Needs You, which brings together ideas, actions and projects based on six Ps. The first P stands for People, because that’s what it’s all about: giving people equal opportunities, prosperity, welfare, respect. Peace is about fighting injustice, big and small, in the world. Prosperity combats poverty and inequality. Planet stands for actions on biodiversity, climate, air quality, animal rights... With Partnership, VUB is looking for joint actions to make the world a better place. The sixth and last P is for Poincaré, the French philosopher Henri Poincaré, from whom VUB derives its motto that thinking should submit to nothing except the facts themselves. VUB is an ’urban engaged university’, strongly anchored in Brussels and Europe and working according to the principles of free research.
