Anyone who genuinely wants to bring the truth to light gets to know the media power-brokers of the establishment. This applies to everyone who draws attention to inconvenient facts — whether about farmers, immigration, or any other subject. I myself have never experienced it as badly as with Israel, especially since we published a report criticising the NOS (the Dutch public broadcaster).

The old Dutch proverb says: However fast a lie may travel, the truth will catch up with it eventually. Is that really true? Sometimes I think we like to believe it because it reassures us. Because it offers the illusion of safety, and hope for the future.

But has the truth won out in recent years? A year after the publication of our well-documented report on the NOS’s Israel coverage for young people, I seriously wonder whether it’s even possible to bring the truth to light if the media power-brokers don’t want it to happen.

Turning point

Before 7 October 2023, I already knew that most media weren’t neutral about Israel, and I wrote about it once or twice. But there were issues closer to home that seemed so much more pressing. The immigration that is radically changing our country, the precarious position of Dutch farmers, the transfer of sovereignty to the undemocratic EU, and above all the hollowing-out of our democracy.

On every one of these issues, our established media stood — and still stand — on the wrong side: the side of the establishment, which gets it wrong on every point of this incomplete list. Yet it was only after 7 October 2023 that I began to realise how sick our system really was.

Those first weeks… countless media outlets seized every opportunity to blacken the name of Israel, which had just suffered a devastating attack. Public sympathy for Israel, it seemed, had to be stamped out quickly and thoroughly. These media did not report neutrally; their mission appeared to be to educate the Dutch. ‘These are the villains, those are the victims. This is the side you should be on.’

In hindsight, it wasn’t even that the established media dropped their mask. It was our illusions about their integrity that turned out to be untenable.

Tweet text: Shall I tell you something? I’m afraid. #JewHatred is sloshing against the skirting boards everywhere. And not just among the ‘official’ extremists, but daily in your ‘quality media’ — who will soon piously cry NEVER AGAIN on 4 May (Dutch Remembrance Day). What still awaits us…? #Thread🧵

Writing pieces, filing complaints

And yet I still had illusions. In an open debate, it would become clear what was true, so I wrote articles: first mainly pieces explaining things, later increasingly fact-checks of inaccurate reporting by the established media. Yes, Hamas leaders really did say they want to repeat 7 October until Israel is destroyed. No, Gaza was not an open-air prison.

Information like this was barely, if at all, to be found at the NPO (the Dutch public broadcasting organisation) or the Dutch quality newspapers. Fortunately, there were still outlets that could be trusted, but outside the Jewish and pro-Israel media, there were embarrassingly few of them.

My articles struck a chord, but almost exclusively with people who already knew something was wrong. How was I supposed to reach those being indoctrinated daily by media with an anti-Israel bias? The NPO runs on taxpayers’ money and is, in principle, accountable to us. So I filed complaints, but they ran aground on the protective wall of the ‘watchdogs‘.

The investigation

Just as I was on the verge of losing heart, José Hak came knocking.

NPO reporting for young people — educational videos and the NOS youth news bulletins — is smaller in scale, but suffers from the same problems as the coverage for adults. What’s more, all these youth bulletins and explainer videos are shown in virtually every school in the Netherlands. This is teaching material, then, and teaching material has to meet educational standards. It must inform pupils neutrally and encourage critical thinking.

José asked whether I would help with an investigation into this NOS material, and I gladly agreed. Supported by a group of volunteers, we analysed dozens of videos and wrote a report. It came out on 9 September 2025.

In that report, we demonstrated point by point all the shortcomings in what (primarily) the NOS told young people in the first year and a half following 7 October 2023. Everything we wrote is verifiable by anyone. Every analysis contains links to the material assessed, so anyone can compare the analyses directly with the videos. Countless links to sources back up our observations.

We tested the material against the standards the NOS itself claims to uphold, and catalogued, at length, where those standards were breached. As I said, anyone can check for themselves whether our conclusions hold up. The videos we analysed were no small selection; it was a huge sample that gives a clear picture of the total output.

In the media

Bart Nijman and I discussed the report on the Nijman & Charante podcast, and I wrote about it for OpinieZ. Wynia’s Week, De Telegraaf, Wierd Duk, EW Magazine and NieuwRechts (which also produced a podcast) covered it too. Countless Jewish and pro-Israel outlets also reported on it, but you can already see what’s missing from this list. The ‘quality newspapers’ and the NPO were not interested — not even to tear the report apart.

That’s not because we hadn’t approached these media. We wrote to journalists, columnists and editorial teams, and got nowhere. We tried politics, and parliamentary questions were asked, but they came to nothing. Dutch MP Martin Bosma waved our report around during a media debate. None of it had any effect; the establishment kept its ears shut.

Tweet text: Whether something is actually true genuinely doesn’t seem to matter anymore these days. As long as it supports the group narrative. If the other side says something that’s true, but it’s an inconvenient fact, they’ll be pointed at and accused of lying, or of the worst thing anyone can think of.

Facts don’t count

It seemed as though a cordon sanitaire had been erected to prevent any debate about the quality of Israel coverage. And this while a substantive debate was badly needed, because the reporting no longer revolved around facts, but around an imposed narrative. Anyone paying attention could see this clearly enough, and more evidence keeps emerging that loudly proclaimed stories were indeed untrue.

The willingness to publish wild accusations against Israel without any substantiation stood in stark contrast to the refusal to give thoroughly researched facts in Israel’s favour any serious attention. We found this same one-sidedness in the video material aimed at young people. So we couldn’t help but burst out laughing when we read the NOS’s response to our report:

‘The suggestion that our coverage is riddled with errors, or is skewed or even agenda-driven, we reject outright. If a mistake occasionally creeps into our reporting, it is corrected generously.’

We had actually been too polite even to claim there was an agenda at the NOS, although it’s almost impossible to reach any other conclusion. I’d also point you to the appendices to the report, which contain dozens of analyses that — sadly — show the NOS’s material for young people is indeed riddled with errors. And corrections? Let alone generous ones? That burst of laughter didn’t escape us for nothing.

Criticism is forbidden

Criticism wasn’t welcome, as also became clear when Deputy Prime Minister Mona Keijzer dared to voice very mild criticism of the NOS. She confirmed a verifiable fact about the NOS (that it was copying, verbatim, information supplied by Hamas’s Ministry of Health) and that led to a hysterical week on the NPO talk shows.

At the talk-shows, not for one moment was assessed whether the criticism was actually correct — of course not. Panellists tried to outdo one another in outrage over this ‘attack’ by Deputy Prime Minister Keijzer on ‘independent’ journalism. Even the Ombudsman for Public Broadcasting got involved and saw a danger to democracy.

Why did all these media figures rage with such indignation without checking whether the criticism itself was fair? At the time, I concluded that fear was behind it. Fear that the house of cards of lies wouldn’t withstand a substantive debate. And if a debate can’t be won on the merits, a power-holder can always reach for another weapon: silencing the critics.

Naturally, the media power-brokers saw it differently; they claimed they were standing up for press freedom. But in reality, they were protecting their own position, and that protection was already almost perfect. Thanks to recommendations in government media-literacy campaigns, they hold a monopoly on being right, watchdogs bat away complaints, and — most importantly — all these media outlets cover for one another.

A double shock

For us, as the report’s authors, it was actually a double shock. The first shock was that the NOS material was even more one-sided than we’d expected. Our assumption that gross errors would be the exception turned out to be wrong. By far the majority of explainer videos and youth bulletins had serious flaws.

But the second shock hit harder. We thought that plenty of people in the media, too, would care about protecting young people from indoctrination. We thought people would be shocked by all the failings we exposed. But with one notable exception, journalists ignored what we had brought to light.

How do you break the silence of an establishment that doesn’t want a conversation? That’s the puzzle I’ve been racking my brains over for a while now. Andrew Fox’s assumption that the media power-brokers will finally start seeking the truth after all these revelations strikes me, then, as very optimistic.

Does truth really win?

Truth is stronger than lies, but only if that truth is heard. The establishment’s total refusal to engage in a substantive debate about the demonisation of Israel is above all proof of their fear of that truth. Sadly, they have managed to create a media bastion in which dissenting voices can be kept out.

What sometimes bothers me about reassurances that the truth will win is the complacency behind them. ‘Why worry about the lies? The truth comes out in the end anyway!’ Does it? Just like that, on its own? I don’t think so. If we’re not willing to fight for the truth with everything we have, we give the lies the chance to overrun everything.

And if the power-holders succeed in reining in the free internet — particularly that unruly X, where dissenting voices can still be heard — then we too will be cut off from the information that lets us see through the propaganda. How much longer will our thinking then remain free? That is why it is important not to give up and not to let those in control of the media off the hook.

Whoever doesn’t take the fight for the truth seriously will lose it.

 

This article was originally published in Dutch.

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