Sat Sep 27: Second occupation of the media park at the NOS
NOS, Tell The Truth! Stop misleading frames, fake neutrality and false balance
On Saturday 27 September at 12:00 Extinction Rebellion will once again occupy the media park in front of the NOS building to demand truthfull news. This time it will be a larger occupation in which multiple movements will join. The NOS must take its responsibility and must take its tasks as a publicly funded news service seriously.
The NOS aims to ‘inform Dutch citizens as well as possible about news, sports and events of national and international importance’. Unfortunately, that is not what the NOS does. Misleading frames, fake neutrality and false balance give citizens an incorrect picture of reality, research shows that NOS news leans to the right. Taking action against injustice presupposes accurate knowledge. Whether it concerns the climate and ecological crisis, migration, or the genocide that Israel is committing against the Palestinians: the NOS often does not give an truthfull picture. This has to stop.
—Martijn Dekker, spokesperson Extinction Rebellion
NOS: right-wing bias
The NOS claims to report neutrally, but research by Ground News shows that this is not the case. Ground News bases its findings on thousands of NOS headlines and NOS news articles from the past three months and on combined bias scores from Ad Fontes Media, Media Bias/Fact Check and All Sides. The conclusion is that NOS reporting should be classified in the category “Lean Right”, in other words: there is a right-wing bias.
One of the topics where the use of right-wing frames by the NOS stands out is migration. This is worrying, especially in view of the upcoming elections in October. By using these right-wing, misleading frames, the NOS contributes to the right-wing shift of the Dutch political landscape and the introduction of extreme right-wing policies.
On April 22, for example, the NOS headlines: “Cabinet wants to be able to deport rejected children to ‘return hubs’”. A veiled way of saying that the cabinet wants to lock up children in immigration detention centers outside the EU. Another low point is the manual for fascist migration policy that the NOS published on May 27 with the headline: “Asylum stop and EU rules to be pushed aside? This is how other countries are tackling it”. The NOS news of June 15 about euphemistically worded “border controls” also fits into an extreme right frame. The NOS headlined: “Again border controls by a group of citizens, this time at Sellingen in Groningen”. The fact that this is racist and illegal intimidation remains out of focus.
Climate journal necessary
Research by Solid Sustainability Research shows that NOS news about the climate and ecological crisis is often incomplete and misleading. In the period from October 1, 2022 to September 30, 2024, the term “climate change” appeared in only 22% of the articles about extreme weather. Of these articles, “climate change” was mentioned in the headline in only 11% of cases.
Although the NOS seems to have decided to more often add a separate box explaining “climate change” to articles about extreme weather since the first occupation of the Mediapark, this does not solve the problems with NOS news. Anyone who watches NOS news or reads NOS articles gets an incomplete and unfair picture of the seriousness of the climate and ecological crisis. Due to the lack of explanation and the fact that the NOS hardly allows marginalized voices to speak, it remains unclear how deadly the consequences are today, especially in countries in the Global South. The (upcoming) consequences for people in the Netherlands and Europe also remain unclear. In order to ensure that the NOS fulfills its duties with regards to climate news, a weekly climate journal in which these topics are discussed is necessary.
Fake neutrality and false balance cover up genocide
In NOS news about the genocide that Israel is committing against the Palestinians and the attacks on Iran, there is, in addition to misleading frames, fake neutrality and false balance.
On June 13, the NOS headlines: “Israel carries out air strikes on nuclear installations and Iranian army chiefs”. This sounds like neutral reporting, but it is not. According to international law, countries are allowed to defend themselves if they are attacked. In the case of Israel, this is not the case. The NOS, however, repeats Israeli frames as if it were neutral reporting: “The attacks must prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power” and “For Israel, it is out of the question that their arch enemy becomes a nuclear power”. Also, no legal expert is given a say, which contributes to a false balance. Anyone who reads this article without prior knowledge will not realize that Israel is trampling on international law.
In the live blog of June 19, the NOS headlines “72 Palestinians killed in Gaza Strip, 21 of whom at aid points”. This also sounds like neutral reporting, but it is not. The so-called “aid points” are owned by a controversial Israeli-American organization, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. Time and again, the Israeli army shoots Palestinian civilians at these locations. It is not neutral to call such a location an “aid point”. Karel Hendriks, director of Doctors Without Borders said in an article on RTL on June 29: “It is a massacre disguised as aid. First you create scarcity, then you lock down the area, you make people dependent on aid, you force people to one specific place and then you shoot them there.”
NOS annual report: spending of tax money
The importance of the task of the NOS — lives literally depend on it — must be reflected in the spending of public money by the NOS. Unfortunately, valuable time and resources are spent on reporting on sports such as football, cycling and Formula 1. In 2023, a “cheap” year due to the lack of “super events” for which the rights are very expensive, almost as much money went to sports (81 million euros) as to other journalism (87 million euros). In 2022, considerably more money went to sports than to other journalism: 125 million euros versus 81 million euros. A bad thing. The NOS should actually invest extra money to improve its reporting of news and background information and to highlight marginalized voices and groups.