In a committee meeting of the Dutch parliament last Wednesday, Minister Eppo Bruins (Education, Culture and Science, NSC) pledged to engage with administrators on the position of higher education media like Delta, at universities and colleges, higher eduction press agency HOP reports.
Bruins made the commitment after parliament member (NSC) Rosanne Hertzberger brought up university and college newspapers in a broad debate on higher education. Hertzberger worried about the encroaching ‘glossyfication’ of higher education magazines, HOP writes. ‘Unwelcome stories are being pressured.’
SP parliament member Sandra Beckerman concurred with her. “There seems to be more and more marketing and less good journalism.” According to them, a solution might be to establish the independence of the magazines by law. For the time being, Bruins does not seem in favor of that plan. According to HOP he did say that he was willing to talk about it with the administrators of the relevant universities and colleges. His predecessor Robbert Dijkgraaf did the same.
Under a magnifying glass
The independence of higher education journals has been under a magnifying glass for some time. In April, for example, TU Delft forced Delta to pull an article offline in which revelations about social insecurity at the Innovation & Impact Center on campus were made. It took two months before the article came back online in modified form.
Eindhoven’s Cursor closed its website last year after editor-in-chief Han Konings was removed from his position. The reason for this was repeated pressure from the Executive Board and its own editorial board not to publish critical articles. Cursor recently adopted a new, more robust editorial statute in which independence is more strongly emphasized. Delta is also working on this.
Information source: HOP
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