In a bizarre swipe at public media, the VVD has stated that tax payers money can’t be used to develop the websites of the public channels. Are they supposed to be website-less? The stated reason is unfair competition with newspapers, but newspapers have been notoriously slow to pick up any kind of innovation. The VVD states that the public channels can afford to experiment with new media without the risk that newspapers have, but that’s kind of precisely the point: if the public channels pick up the risk, then the commercial channels don’t have to: they can see what works and what doesn’t and for much much lower development costs copy what does work.

nrc.nl – Binnenland – VVD: geen internet door publieke omroep.