Below are specific findings about news media attitudes and habits in the Netherlands. The findings come from a Pew Research Center survey about news media and politics across eight Western European countries conducted from Oct. 30 to Dec. 20, 2017. The survey covered five countries in the north (Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden and the United Kingdom) and three in the south (France, Italy and Spain).
Views of the news media in the Netherlands
The sense of importance of and trust in the news media vary considerably by country. In general, adults in northern European countries – for example, Sweden and Germany – are more likely to say the news media are very important and that they trust the news media, while people in France and Italy are the least likely to say this.
In the Netherlands, a minority of adults (43%) consider the news media very important to society. Yet, a majority (67%) say they trust the news media. This includes 18% who say they trust the news media a lot.
In most of the countries surveyed, people who hold populist views are less likely to say the news media are important and to trust the news media than people who don’t hold populist views. In general, the differences in these attitudes about the news media are small when comparing between people on the left and right of the ideological spectrum.
This pattern holds true in the Netherlands as well: 62% of people with populist views say they trust the news media, compared with 72% of those without populist views. On the question of importance, 35% of people with populist views say the news media are very important to society, compared with 55% of those with non-populist views.
Main sources used for news in the Netherlands
When it comes to the news sources people say they turn to most frequently, the divides between adults with and without populist leanings are not as strong as those seen for attitudes about the news media more generally. And in the southern countries, there tend to be larger divides in main news source preference between people on the left and right of the ideological spectrum than between those with and without populist views.
In the Netherlands, those on the left and right do not differ with regard to the media source they turn to most for news. Both those on the left and the right are most likely to name Nederlandse Publieke Omroep (NPO) as their main news source, followed by NU.nl.
Where users place outlets’ ideologies, on the right and on the left
For many of the news outlets across the eight countries, people who use an outlet to get news tend to think the outlet is closer to their own left-right ideological position. In the Netherlands, this is true for five outlets asked about: the NOS, RTL, NU.nl, Algemeen Dagblad (AD) and de Volkskrant. For these outlets, news users on either the right or left tend to place them closer to their own ideology. For one outlet – De Telegraaf – right-aligned and left-aligned news users generally agree on its left-right placement. Joop.nl and GeenStijl are not included in this analysis, because the outlets did not have a large enough sample of left or right users to analyze.
In general, where the public places an outlet tends to differ from where the average audience actually sits ideologically. For each of the news outlets asked about in the survey, the average audience (based on self-reported usage) tends to fall near the ideological center. People who have heard of each outlet, however, tend to place the outlet either farther to the left or farther to the right than the actual ideological position of the outlet’s audience.
The Netherlands is a slight exception. For some outlets, while their news audiences are near the ideological center, people who have heard of each outlet tend to think it leans slightly more to the right. De Telegraaf, for example, has an audience that sits at about the middle of the left-right spectrum (3.6 on the 0-to-6 scale), but when asked to place the outlet on the same left-right scale, people who have heard of De Telegraaf place it farther to the right (at 3.9). But other outlets show little difference: Algemeen Dagblad has an audience near the ideological center (3.4 on the 0-to-6 scale), and people who have heard of AD place it near the center of the left-right spectrum as well (at 3.3).
Trust in news media outlets
In seven of the eight countries surveyed, the most trusted news outlet asked about is the public news organization in each country. This is the case in the Netherlands, where a majority of adults (89%) say they trust the public news organization the NOS.
As with trust in the news media generally, trust in specific outlets varies by populist leanings, with those who hold populist views expressing lower levels of trust than those who don’t.
The Netherlands is no exception. For example, those with populist leanings are 28 percentage points less likely than those with non-populist views to say they trust de Volkskrant. When it comes to left-right ideological differences, though, those who place themselves on the right of the 0-to-6 point ideological scale are 16 percentage points less likely than people on the left to trust de Volkskrant.
Social media usage and views
Many people in Western Europe get news through social media, with Facebook cited as the most widely used platform for news.
In the Netherlands, 55% of adults get news on social media, including 37% who get news on social media daily. Facebook is the most common social network used for news. In the Netherlands, young people (those 18 to 29 years old) are more likely to get news on social media daily than those 50 and older (55% vs. 24%).
About half or more social media news consumers in each of the eight countries surveyed say they are familiar with the sources they see on social media. Still, sizeable minorities say they typically do not pay attention to the source of the news they encounter there.
Social media news consumers in the Netherlands are similar to other Western Europeans – 56% are familiar with the news sources they find on social media, but roughly a third do not pay attention to the sources there.
Find out more
Read the methodology and full report for more on the Netherlands and the other seven Western European countries included in the survey. For global data on media habits and attitudes see the report “Publics Globally Want Unbiased News Coverage, but Are Divided on Whether Their News Media Deliver.”