The sanction means that an amount equal to 2.5 percent of the ON! established annual budget for the year 2022 is withheld. The amount will be settled with the budget for the year 2023 that has yet to be determined.
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More than half a million
Under the Media Act, the broadcaster’s budget (in total approximately 3.5 million euros) could be cut by a maximum of 15 percent. That would therefore be an amount of 525,000 euros. The actual penalty is therefore considerably lower.
The broadcaster will be sanctioned after an investigation by the Ombudsman of the public broadcasters into the journalistic actions of the ON! program Ongehoord Nieuws. He concluded that the NPO Journalistic Code has been systematically violated and that guests could make unfounded statements without a reply.
No counterbalance
Presenters of ON! rarely asked if guests made unsubstantiated or non-factual statements. For example, Forum for Democracy MP Freek Jansen said that the cabinet wants to ‘dismantle our country’ by bringing ‘the criminal African happening’ from French suburbs to the Netherlands as a labor migrant. The presenters did not counterbalance this remark and did not ask further.
The Board of Directors of the NPO assumes that Ongehoord Nederland is now taking measures to respect the journalistic code of the public broadcaster.
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Reaction Unheard of Netherlands
Chairman Arnold Karskens is considering legal action on behalf of Ongehoord Nederland (ON!) against the punitive measure that the board of the NPO has imposed on the broadcaster. According to a statement, Ongehoord Nederland is ‘positive’ that the NPO has reduced the fine to more than 93,000 euros instead of the 600,000 euros it could have imposed. Yet Karskens calls this ‘still a lot of money’, money that he says he cannot spend on improving the programs.
Karskens also emphasizes that ON! disagrees with the board of directors that the broadcaster deserves a penalty ‘because we have expressed certain, apparently undesirable, opinions about, for example, the enormous mass immigration and the consequences of the extreme climate and environmental measures in our country for farmers and citizens ‘. “A fine, because we allow elected representatives of the people to speak extensively in our broadcasts.”
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