Theatre producer and former media mogul Joop van den Ende has called on the government to protect Dutch media against the influence of American tech companies.

Van den Ende, one of the devisers of the Big Brother reality tv format, took out full-page ads in the NRC, Telegraaf and AD in which he criticised the cabinet’s €100 million cutback on public broadcasting.

The media in the Netherlands have entered “alarm fase 1”, Van den Ende said. Tech giants Meta, Amazon and X have “found their ideal partner in Trump”, he said, “manipulating elections and abusing their knowledge of people’s online behaviour to pollute their information channels with conspiracy theories and lies.”

Van den Ende said that instead of imposing cutbacks, the government should invest in public broadcasting which he said is used as a news source by three-quarters of people in the Netherlands.

“A well-functioning public broadcasting system merits protection, particularly in times like these, so journalists can continue to do  their investigative job and producers can develop programmes which can reach millions of people,” he said.

Van den Ende also said commercial media are being restricted and cited the proposed buy out of RTL Nederland by Belgian media company DPG.

Consumer watchdog ACM has said this would give DPG a monopoly position on the Dutch market. Van den Ende called the ACM stance “hopelessly behind the times” and said a powerful DGP would be able to “finally take on American domination”.