Page - 100 - in Media – Migration – Integration - European and North American Perspectives

Leen d’Haenens | Whither Cultural Diversity on the Dutch TV Screen? 100 to want to return to the consensus politics of the Dutch polder model, has made the decision to halt the deportation of long-term asylum seekers in December 2006 and has initiated a more humane policy that will provide a general pardon for those asylum seekers who arrived in the Netherlands before April1, 2001 and who have made a request to stay. After this general introduction and overall evaluation of the Dutch integration policy, as well as the societal model that lies underneath it, we will sketch the peculiar structure of the public broadcasting system which is considered apt to represent all social and ideological fractions in society. Parallel to this, the degree to which the Dutch media system succeeds in reflecting the diversity of its population in its media content and workforce will be assessed. This is an issue that has been and still is at the forefront of controversy and concern in the media industry. By way of illustration, two research initiatives questioning the diversity of the media will be looked into. In an effort to improve the symbolic representation of the “majority” as well as of the “minority” in each other’s eyes and to achieve greater social and cultural participation of ethnic minorities in the media, we will assess the way in which the Dutch portray, or omit to portray, symbolic diversity on television. Special emphasis will be put on the public broadcaster’s contribution to fostering a more inclusive media portrayal. The first case deals with the responsibility assumed by a pluralist society consisting of both the commercial and public broadcasters to create fair portrayals of age, gender, and ethnicity. The second refers to in-depth interviews with producers of homemade fiction and their views on critical success factors enabling (or not) diverse television content. 2. The Dutch Broadcasting System: The Right Answer to Appeal to All Taste Cultures? The Netherlands has not chosen a unitary national public broadcasting system (as in most other European countries). Nor does it have a commercial broadcasting model (as in the US or Luxembourg). Rather, it has come up with a prototype of its own, commonly characterized as a “pillarized” model. Neither market nor state-oriented, the Dutch model of broadcasting was developed by its civil society, i.e. social movements that were already well established in most domains of social life (Bardoel, 2001, 2003; Van der Haak & Van Snippenburg, 2001). The ideological foundation for this strategy is rooted in the Calvinist and Catholic social ideologies of “cultural sovereignty” and “subsidiarity”: These movements aimed at uniting and emancipating their own social groups while at the same time isolating themselves from external