On Friday 19 April 19, Dutch Lower House member Luc Stultiens (GroenLinks-PvdA) asked parliamentary questions about the course of events surrounding an article that Delta took offline in protest. Among other things, Stultiens wants to know whether Outgoing Education Minister Robbert Dijkgraaf shares the view of the Nederlandse Vereniging van Journalisten (Dutch Association of Journalists, Eds.) that the independence of independent higher education media is under pressure.
The legal pressure exerted on Delta – for which the Executive Board has since apologized – is not the first incident that higher education media have had to deal with. For example, the editors of Cursor (TU Eindhoven), put their website on black last fall in protest against the dismissal of the editor-in-chief and the curtailment of their editorial freedom.
Another example is Science Guide, which ran into financial trouble after a critical article about the chairman of the board of Maastricht University. At the magazine Sam (Hogeschool Arnhem-Nijmegen), a manager of the Marketing, Communication and Information Department had his reaction posted above a column he disagreed with.
Stultiens also elaborated on Parliamentary questions Peter Kwint (SP) and Lisa Westerveld (GroenLinks-PvdA) earlier asked in response to the events at Cursor. The minister announced then that he did not consider it necessary to launch a broad investigation into journalistic freedom at higer education newspapers and university editorial boards. “How do you look at this now?”, Stultiens wants to know.
Dijkgraaf has three weeks to answer the parliamentary questions.
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