Netherlands
The Dutch media landscape continues to be characterised by strong legacy brands and public broadcasting provision. Media is highly concentrated, with the commercial market consolidating further. Several news media launched initiatives to reach younger audiences, from free subscriptions to native video content.
Already marked by high media concentration, the Dutch media landscape has further consolidated. The acquisition by the country’s largest media company, DPG Media, of TV and entertainment company RTL Nederland was approved by the Netherlands Competition Authority (ACM). They previously postponed their decision due to concerns about the amount, quality, and plurality of news available to consumers. Conditions for the approval included the continuation of NU.nl – already owned by DPG Media – and RTL Nieuws as separate, freely accessible news sites, and the creation of independent foundations for both brands to safeguard their mission and identity. DPG Media also had to reinforce the editorial independence of its other news titles, which include the De Volkskrant newspaper and website. The acquisition further included the streaming service Videoland (1.7m subscribers1).
Major Dutch media brands wrote a joint letter to the Dutch informateur (the official with responsibility for exploring government coalition formation), addressing concerns about society losing grip on ‘a fact-finding oriented and pluralistic provision of information due to the dominant role of global tech companies’.2 In particular, they called for an integrated approach to media and technology policy, especially regarding AI, and for quicker and stronger implementation of EU legislation against Big Tech’s power.
Over 30 news brands made their news archives available for training the Dutch AI initiative GPT‑NL. This project aims to develop a reliable, trustworthy, reciprocal, and sovereign Dutch large language model (LLM), focusing on specific tasks such as summarisation, simplification, and information extraction. It presents itself as a responsible alternative to existing LLMs, focused on protection of copyright and giving fair compensation to news media for the use of their data.
Publisher Mediahuis is trialling a project with AI agents to fully produce breaking news or 'first-line news' service, with humans only reviewing the final output. There was controversy after a former NRC editor‑in‑chief was suspended by Mediahuis for publishing AI‑fabricated quotes in his newsletter. Various DPG Media titles are also experimenting with generative AI. Regional newspaper Tubantia aims to fight news avoidance through suggestions to journalists for simpler, less negative language and making stories more relevant to readers. De Volkskrant is experimenting with an AI chatbot enabling readers to explore articles in-depth using pre-programmed questions, with answers based on the newspaper’s own content.
News organisations intensified their efforts to reach younger audiences. After providing 5,000 free regional news subscriptions annually to people who could not otherwise afford them, DPG Media offered free digital news subscriptions to 16–25-year-old students. Mediahuis launched SPILNEWS, presented as a ‘news-startup’ independent from the publisher’s established titles, such as NRC and Telegraaf. They present news in an influencer-like style, prominently featuring their young journalists, across digital platforms. NU.nl announced a similar ‘video-first’ social media strategy. SPILNEWS voiced concern over TikTok’s opaque moderation and shadow-banning practices (platform limitations on the visibility of content or accounts without notifying the user), citing a lack of warnings, transparency, and opportunities to respond, which runs counter to the European Media Freedom Act.
PSB NOS’s youth brand NOS Stories continues to do well across social media, especially TikTok (1.3m followers) and Instagram (1.2m). The platform Cestmocro – which is run anonymously and repurposes news from traditional news media and other sources – remains very popular on Instagram (1.2m), but its TikTok presence is far smaller, around 110,000 at the start of 2026. Popular young newsfluencer Benderbij – a play on his name Benjamin and the Dutch translation of ‘I’m there’ – blends street reporting with interviews, describing his style as ‘humorous journalism with a critical edge’. As of early 2026, he had 600,000 followers on TikTok and over 300,000 on both YouTube and Instagram.
The rising role of newsfluencers raised questions about who counts as a journalist. Popular platform Left Laser, which describes itself as ‘an independent media platform with a communist worldview’, was initially denied press access to the Dutch House of Representatives, even after hiring an editor and creating an editorial statute. The journalists’ union NVJ argued that Left Laser met the criteria for accreditation. Following media attention and questions from two MPs, the platform was eventually granted access.
The past year saw multiple incidents of (populist) politicians attacking news outlets, raising concerns about the erosion of media trust and the normalisation of violence against journalists. Reports of intimidation, threats, and violence against journalists have increased for the third consecutive year.3
Tim Groot Kormelink
Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
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.
Changing media
TV and print continue their decline as news sources over the past decade. Online and social media slightly declined post-COVID-19, but appear to be stabilising now.
Pay for online news
15%
(-2)
Avoid the news sometimes/often
34%
(+2)
Trust in news overall
49%
(-1)
Global average: 37%
Trust in Dutch news has slowly declined from the COVID-19 peak but remains comparatively high. Trust in individual news brands also remains high, with PSB NOS the most widely trusted, closely followed by regional and local news and leading commercial brands RTL and NU.nl.
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
2/180
Score 88.92
Measure of press freedom from NGO Reporters Without Borders based on expert assessment. More at rsf.org
Footnotes
1 https://www.rtl.nl/nieuws/economie/artikel/5512483/dpg-media-neemt-na-lang-wachten-rtl-nederland-over
2 https://sdm.nl/en/brief-aan-de-informateur-namens-de-nederlandse-mediasector/
3 https://nvj.nl/_assets/f/291561/x/03788d3456/brief-minister-letschert-en-van-weel-inzake-veiligheid-van-journalisten.pdf