Belgium
Belgium’s media landscape is characterised by its division between the Dutch-speaking Flemish region and the French-speaking Wallonia. Against a backdrop of declining print revenues and the decreased state distribution subsidies, the past year has been one of further consolidation, cuts – and some striking attempts to bridge the language divide.
This year the decline of television (49%) and print (18%) as sources of news seemed to stabilise, while remaining well below the use of online sources (75%), which continue to be the most common source of news. Interestingly, news via social media sees an uptick (+4pp to 41%). Illustrative is the breakthrough of young (French-speaking) news creator Askip offering a critical and culturally diverse take on the news to his c.50,000 followers on TikTok. The growth in digital is also reflected in the data from CIM showing that total brand reach for news media is fastest-growing amongst the 25–54 age group.1
However, the growth in digital reach cannot compensate for print’s problems. In the Walloon region, Le Soir let go of five long-serving staff, and news channel LN24 pivoted away from pure news towards general programming, shedding journalists in the process. BX1 and RTL have also cut freelancers. Publishers point to two compounding causes: a federal government decision to end subsidised newspaper distribution, and the continued loss of advertising revenue to Meta and Google.
Media organisations in Belgium are again turning to consolidation as an answer to these challenges, illustrated most recently by the planned merger between Rossel (Le Soir, Sudinfo) and IPM (La Libre, L'Avenir, La DH). If approved by the Belgian Competition Authority during 2026, almost all French-language daily newspapers would sit under a single group. The rationale provided by the companies centres on the need for shared investment in AI and digital infrastructure. The media regulators in both regions continue to raise serious concerns about press pluralism, particularly when the apparent range of titles masks considerable editorial integration behind the scenes. The deal has prompted Walloon Media Minister Jacqueline Galant to attack the PSB RTBF, arguing its free online news undermines the struggling print sector, echoing the argument of many Belgian private media companies against a text-based public news offering.
In this context, Minister Galant has proposed reducing the number of non-profit local media outlets receiving subsidies from twelve to eight by 2031 and freezing subsidy indexation. In Flanders too, public and local media are being hit by new government cuts. BRUZZ, the bilingual Brussels media house, saw its funding fall by 6.4%, forcing it to lose four journalists and reduce coverage. Global affairs magazine MO* lost its entire subsidy of €216,000 p.a., triggering a crowdfunding appeal. Meanwhile, Flemish public broadcaster VRT, Fonds Pascal Decroos for investigative journalism, the Flemish Association for Journalists, and news site DeWereldMorgen, all saw their subsidies reduced.
Unfortunately, it seems there may be a political as well as an economic rationale for cuts: Galant was caught on video hoping that new RTBF leadership would steer the broadcaster away from ‘the other side of the political spectrum’ – leading the European Federation of Journalists to file a complaint with the Council of Europe, noting the statements violated the media decree guaranteeing editorial independence of French-language public media.2 On top of this, MR party president Georges-Louis Bouchez compared RTBF journalists to Nazi-era police in a retweet, called for a parliamentary inquiry into public broadcasting, and labelled Brussels subsidised non-profit broadcaster BX1 ‘the socialist party’s social network’.
In a striking move, Dutch-language De Standaard launched a French-language digital edition in December 20253, produced by a small team of editors who use AI to translate 15–25 articles per day for French-speaking readers. ‘We believe it is relevant, from a journalistic and democratic point of view, to be accessible to all Belgians’, wrote Editor-in-Chief Karel Verhoeven, although tapping into a new market at a low cost forms a likely motivation too. Similarly, 21News, a French-language outlet launched in 2024, has launched a Dutch edition after raising over €1m in capital, targeting liberal and centre-right readers in Flanders.
All this happened against a background of rapid adoption of AI. Data from Digimeter show that 43% (+15pp) of Flemish media users now turn to generative AI at least monthly; 75% of those aged 18 to 24 and 81% amongst students now use generative AI. Importantly, the most common use of AI is to find information quickly,4 highlighting how AI chatbots are forming a challenge for news media in Belgium, as in many other parts of the world.
Ike Piccone
Associate Professor of Journalism and Media Studies, Vrije Universiteit Brussel
In the online survey we ask respondents which news brands they have used to access news in the last week. These figures are based on respondents’ recall of the news sources they have used, and should be understood as survey-based measures of weekly brand reach for news.
They are not the same as web analytics, audience ratings, or other audience measurement systems (such as BARB for television in the UK). Those approaches use different methods and may measure different things. Our figures are based on what respondents tell us in an online survey about which brands they have used for news in the past week.
It is also important to note that we ask specifically about use for news. Some multi-genre broadcasters, newspapers, or other providers offer content beyond news, and the figures in our report should not be interpreted as measuring the overall audience reach for these media organisations. They refer only to respondents who say they used that brand to access news.
How do you ask about offline and online news reach?
We ask about offline and online reach separately. First, we ask respondents which brands they have used to access news offline in the last week, via TV, radio, print, and other traditional media. Then we ask which brands they have used to access news online in the last week, via websites, apps, social media, and other forms of internet access.
The questions as asked in the survey are:
Which of the following brands have you used to access news offline in the last week (via TV, radio, print, and other traditional media)? Please select all that apply.
Which of the following brands have you used to access news online in the last week (via websites, apps, social media, and other forms of Internet access)? Please select all that apply.
Respondents can select more than one brand in each question. For that reason, the figures do not add up to 100%. They show the proportion of respondents who say they used each brand for news in the last week.
How do you present the weekly news reach data in the report?
On each country or market page, we present the most widely used brands in two charts: one for offline news reach and one for online news reach. The offline chart covers use via TV, radio, print, and other traditional media. The online chart covers use via websites, apps, social media, and other internet-based forms of access.
The figures shown are weekly news reach: the percentage of respondents who say they used that brand for news at least once in the last week.
These figures are useful for comparing the relative news reach of different brands within each market, and for understanding how news use is distributed across offline and online sources. However, they should not be treated as market shares or measures of total time spent with a brand.
How do you choose which brands to ask about?
The brand selection is a strategic sample and not a comprehensive list of all news providers in each market. We consult with country or market experts, review prior years’ Digital News Report data, and draw on other data sources to identify the most widely used brands for news across traditional and online channels.
In some cases, where a news provider operates a number of related news brands, we aggregate these under a single heading. For example, in the UK, reach for the BBC may include use of several BBC news services across different platforms. This is done to give a clearer sense of the overall reach of major news providers, but it means that figures may not always refer to a single programme, website, app, newspaper, or channel.
Because of survey length limitations, we can only ask about a limited number of brands in each market. The charts should not be treated as exhaustive lists of every brand used for news in that market. Due to space limitations, reach charts show up to 16 of the most used brands, though we ask about more in each survey.
How should the offline and online figures be interpreted?
A respondent may use the same brand both offline and online, and may also use several different brands in the same week. For this reason, the offline and online figures should not be added together to calculate a total audience. They are best read as separate indicators of how far particular brands reach people through different forms of access.
As with other survey-based findings, small differences should be interpreted with caution. We are careful not to claim that one brand reaches more people than another, or that a brand’s reach has changed, unless the differences are large enough to be meaningful. Any year on year change of 2 percentage points or lower is not considered statistically significant.
Pay for online news
14%
(-2)
Flemish-speaking: 14%
French-speaking: 14%
Avoid the news sometimes/often
40%
Flemish-speaking: 38%
French-speaking: 42%
Trust in news overall
39%
(-4)
Flemish-speaking: 49%
French-speaking: 28%
Global average: 37%
The significant trust gap between Flemish-speaking Flanders (49%) and French-speaking Wallonia (28%) continues to widen. This gap also translates to brand trust scores, which are significantly higher and more resilient in Flanders than in Wallonia. In both markets, the respective public broadcasters VRT and RTBF remain the most trusted news sources, even though some commercial organisations follow closely.
We ask each respondent to rate a number of popular brands (usually 15 in each country) according to how trustworthy they think each brand’s news output is. We do this on a 0-10 scale, where a score of 0 means that the respondent does not see the brand as trustworthy at all and 10 means that they see the brand as completely trustworthy – with 5 meaning ‘neither trustworthy or untrustworthy’. There is an option for those who have not heard of any particular brand to ensure that scores are based only on responses from people who are familiar with each brand.
When we come to report these scores, we add up the proportion of respondents that give a score between 6-10 and mark this as ‘trust’. We also add up the proportion that give a brand a score between 0-4 and mark this as ‘don’t trust’.
The question as asked in the survey is…
How trustworthy would you say news from the following brands is? Please use the scale below, where 0 is ‘not at all trustworthy’ and 10 is ‘completely trustworthy’.
As we make explicit throughout the report, including next to tables presenting brand-level trust findings, whether respondents consider a brand trustworthy or not is their subjective judgement. The percentage figures shown are aggregates of people’s personal opinions, they are not an objective assessment of underlying trustworthiness. We leave it to each respondent to form an opinion on whether they trust someone or something, and we field the question because we consider the resulting data to be important.
How do you present the trust data in the report?
We present the data in an alphabetised table. In the past, we presented this data as a stacked bar chart, but this led some to treat the chart as a list of the most and least trusted news brands in a given market, despite our explicit explanation this was not what the tables showed.
We present the data in a way that avoids giving small differences the appearance of great importance. In cases where there is around two percentage points difference or less between the brands, we cannot say for sure that one brand is more trusted than another. We are careful not to try to claim that one brand is more trusted than another or that trust scores have changed unless those changes are statistically significant.
Due to survey length limitations, it is important to note that we only ask about 15 of the most widely used brands. It is very likely that there are brands with lower (and higher) trust scores that we do not ask about. For that reason, we cannot say that any brand is the least (or most) trusted overall. Next to each chart we are careful to say: “Only the below brands were included in the survey. It should not be treated as a list of the most or least trusted brands as it is not exhaustive.”
How do you choose which brands to ask about?
We consult with country or market experts, draw on prior years’ Digital News Report data and other data sources to determine the most widely used brands (across traditional and online channels) when it comes to news. We also try to include ‘local newspapers’ or ‘local television’ as catch-all titles as we recognise their impact is considerable in most markets.
How representative is this 48-market survey?
The Digital News Report survey is based on an online poll but the methodology selects participants to be as representative of national populations as possible. Samples are assembled using representative quotas for age, gender, and region in every market and data is weighted to targets based on census/industry accepted data. The full methodology can be found here.
How do you try to contextualise the findings to ensure that trust scores are not taken out of context or misinterpreted?
Trust is one of a number of measures we track, including consumption of different sources, device usage, social media use, and much more. We aim to maintain consistency in our measurements year-on-year so that ratings of trust, levels of news consumption, and more, can be contextualised.
Country data is accompanied by an 800-word commentary from a media expert that aims to set the data in a wider context. We write a short commentary on the trust scores where appropriate, noting any statistically relevant changes.
RSF World Press Freedom Index
16/180
Score 81.17
Measure of press freedom from NGO Reporters Without Borders based on expert assessment. More at rsf.org
Footnotes
1 https://www.lesoir.be/704991/article/2025-10-15/le-soir-confirme-sa-position-de-premier-quotidien-belge-de-reference
2 https://fom.coe.int/en/alerte/detail/107643752;globalSearch=false
3 https://www.dhnet.be/dernieres-depeches/2025/12/04/de-standaard-lance-une-version-francophone-NC7FXMN2IZBMPL2DLN5WOQ46MA/
4 https://www.imec.be/nl/vlaamse-innovatiemotor/kennisuitwisseling/techmeters/digimeter