Seite - 104 - in Media – Migration – Integration - European and North American Perspectives

Leen d’Haenens | Whither Cultural Diversity on the Dutch TV Screen? 104 background. On the other hand in the problem-seeking Premtime, a Surinamese presenter looks for discrimination and stigmatization in Dutch society and by doing so, succeeds in portraying this society in a much less stereotypical fashion than it is the case in the regular current affairs programs such as NOVA/Den Haag Vandaag (NOVA/The Hague Today). As far as the employment of ethnic minorities is concerned, in 1995 national and regional public broadcasters and the World Service signed a declaration of intent striving for equal participation by ethnic minorities in all functions and at all levels. This resulted in the “More Colour in the Media” project implemented by Mira Media, a non-profit organization lobbying for more inclusivity. Towards the end of this project, the Stimulating Labor Participation of Minorities Act (SAMEN Act) came into force as a successor to the Act promoting equal employment for immigrant groups, which, however, terminated in December 2003. Since 2002 the public broadcaster’s Office for Diversity (formerly the Department of Portrayal), has worked on implementing the Concession Act for improving the visibility of ethnic employees within public broadcasting, both on and off screen. Several Mira Media projects are linked to this aim by acquiring information through immigrant opinion-leaders and their networks and approaching them (i.e., the online database “Perslink”) and by training immigrants to become media professionals (i.e., “Multiple Choice”). Notwithstanding these initiatives and good intentions, two consecutive Monitors of Diversity (Sterk/Van Dijck, 2003; Koeman/Peeters/d’Haenens, 2007) showed that overall Dutch television (both public and commercial) is still far from providing a fair and pluralistic account of society. Furthermore, by way of a complementary qualitative professional insider’s perspective on the matter, seven program makers were interviewed in-depth about their views on visualizing diversity. This research (Aarden, 2006), of which we are providing a secondary analysis, assesses both the obstacles and opportunities (e.g., media logic, casting, scenario) experienced by the program makers when working at the (re)presentation of constituent groups in society on the Dutch public broadcaster’s fiction output. 4. Recent Research Evidence: Two Examples As of the beginning of 2000, a need for statistics showing the state of affairs concerning questions of representation on Dutch television was felt. This empirical evidence was meant to persuade media professionals to improve their representation of the multicultural society in all its pluriformity and from multiple perspectives. A coding instrument was developed (see also Sterk,