{"id":4335,"date":"2025-12-01T05:03:00","date_gmt":"2025-12-01T05:03:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sdm.nl\/?p=4335"},"modified":"2025-12-08T11:00:58","modified_gmt":"2025-12-08T11:00:58","slug":"brief-aan-de-informateur-namens-de-nederlandse-mediasector","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sdm.nl\/en\/brief-aan-de-informateur-namens-de-nederlandse-mediasector\/","title":{"rendered":"Letter to the Informateur on behalf of the Dutch Media Sector"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Photo: Remko de Waal, ANP<\/p>\n

Amsterdam, November 18th, 2025<\/p>\n

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Dear Mr. Buma,<\/p>\n

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For the first time in history, all major Dutch media outlets, both public and private, are joining forces to approach the informateur. There is an urgent reason for this: our society is losing its grip on a fact-finding oriented and pluralistic provision of information due to the dominant role of global tech companies. This poses a serious threat to democratic resilience, as well as to strategic autonomy and consequently the national security of the Netherlands.<\/p>\n

The provision of news and information to citizens is increasingly in the hands of global tech companies with commercial objectives. Democratic values are not part of this. A good response to this development requires innovation and creativity on our part, but also an innovative approach to media policy in the Netherlands. An approach that does not primarily protect the current structures, but strengthens the future media landscape \u2013 and with it our democracy.<\/p>\n

Now that \u201csecurity\u201d is one of the main items on your agenda for the coming period, we urge you to also make the security of information provision an urgent topic in the upcoming coalition talks.<\/p>\n

Dutch media under pressure <\/strong><\/p>\n

Where social media has already radically changed our information landscape, generative AI applications are now setting in motion a further, more fundamental transformation. Citizens searching for information online are increasingly getting their answers from AI-based search engines, chatbots or virtual assistants, rather than journalistic or other editorially controlled sources. One in nine young people now uses generative AI for their information needs.<\/p>\n

AI offers unprecedented opportunities, which media organisations will embrace. However, there are also significant risks associated with this technology. The responses provided by AI applications are often unreliable, biased, and difficult to verify. The systems are susceptible to manipulation and often produce inaccurate or fabricated information that cannot be challenged. The underlying algorithms and the origin of training data remain largely a black box. AI companies refuse to be held accountable for the content or results of their output. This has major consequences for the quality, reliability, and diversity of information that reaches people.<\/p>\n

Because users obtain their information directly from AI applications, technology companies retain users on their own platforms. At the same time, these companies use our journalistic content without our permission to train their models. Together, this causes news organisations to lose reach and revenue on a large scale. This not only weakens our media landscape, but also the quality of the information on which AI models are trained. This quality deteriorates as less independent, human-made journalism remains. This threatens to create a downward spiral that undermines the quality of public information provision and, with it, the democratic resilience of our society. The more journalism is curtailed, the less insight we have into what is actually occurring in our country and around the world.<\/p>\n

This is no longer ordinary market competition between an established sector and a new one. The question now is: which digital infrastructure for providing information to society will ultimately prevail? Will it be the algorithms of American and Chinese tech giants over which we have no control and that take no responsibility? Or will we build an innovative Dutch digital ecosystem driven by democratic values, in which AI can flourish but media organisations retain the space to provide citizens with reliable information?<\/p>\n

Decisive policy needed <\/strong><\/p>\n

We are prepared to join forces to use our innovative strength to create a powerful, independent and attractive digital media landscape. What we need for this is an innovative political vision and decisive policy from our government.<\/p>\n

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  1. Integrated media and technology policy<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n