PVV senator Marjolein Faber responded to her tweet in which she unjustly said that the media was withholding the "North African appearance" of the perpetrator in a Groningen stabbing two weeks ago. She called it "awkward", but still hasn't removed the tweet from Twitter.
"Since I never reveal my source, I should have taken this into account before posting this tweet. With this in mind, I should not have sent the tweet. Was awkward", she said on Twitter on Monday night.
PVV Senator Marjolein Faber is under fire over a tweet in which she suggested that the media deliberately withheld the "North African" ethnicity of a man suspected of stabbing three people at a Groningen terrace last week. Days after two of the three victims refuted this claim, describing the suspect as having pale skin and gray hair, the populist politician's tweet is still online.
A number of international news outlets reported the death of Dutch teen author Noa Pothoven as "legal euthanasia", though this apparently was not the case. The teenager died in a hospital bed in the living room of her parental home in Arnhem on Sunday, according to newspaper AD. In a final Instagram post the day before her death, she reported that she had stopped eating or drinking some days ago.
She slipped into a coma and passed away. "After years of fighting it is over", she wrote on the social media platform. "After many conversations and assessments it was decided that I will be released because my suffering is unbearable. It's over. I've not been really living for so long, I survive, and not even really that. I breath but no longer live."
"Most of the fake news that Dutch people come across online comes from our own country", Peter Bruger, a researcher at Leiden University, said to newspaper Trouw based on his research.
Facebook will not be able to guarantee that the company is transparent about the placement of political advertisements before the provincial states elections next month, Minister Kasja Ollongren of Home Affairs and Kingdom Relations wrote in a letter to parliament, NOS reports.
Nearly 5.3 million people liked, shared or responded to Dutch 'pulp news' on Facebook at least once, according to a study by Leiden University that was published on Thursday. The researchers consider pulp news to be commercially driven reports that look like news items. According to the researchers, the term 'fake news' is too politically charged, NU.nl reports.
The Dutch government is launching an online campaign against fake news in February, in the run up to the Provincial State and European Parliament elections next year. The campaign must make Dutch voters more aware of the possible presence of disinformation and help people recognize it, Minister Kasja Ollongren of Home Affairs said in a letter to parliament, NOS reports.
The campaign will be spread on social media and last for around four months, through the Provincial States election on March 20th and up to the European Parliament elections on May 23rd.
The Dutch government is planning to launch a campaign against fake news in the run-up to the elections for the Provincial State and European Parliament. In a letter to parliament, Minister Kasja Ollongren of Home Affairs and Kingdom Relations said that the government wants to make citizens more aware of misinformation around the elections, NOS report.
A Facebook post stating that the 34 suspects in the trial around a highway blockade during the national Sinterklaas arrival last year were sentenced to prison, was massively shared on Facebook. The post on the page 'Ik Ben Zwarte Piet Fan' was shared over 25 thousand times in the 23 hours it was online. It has since been removed, NOS reports.
According to the post, all 34 suspects were sentenced to 18 months in prison, six of which conditionally suspended. This is misinformation.
A photo showing former United States President Barrack Obama on an Amsterdam tram with a sleeping student next to him, was massively shared online over the past days. But the photo was faked. The real photo, featuring no sleeping student, was taken in the city of Saint Paul in Minnesota in 2014 by then White House photographer Pete Souza, AT5 reports.
A video of a golden jackal wandering around a wooded area in Ruurlo is fake, according to TV presenter Nicolette van Dam, who posted the video. The fake video was meant to kick off a campaign warning people about tick bites, De Gelderlander reports.
In the run-up to the parliamentary election last year, pro-diversity party DENK worked on a fake PVV advertisement aimed at setting the anti-Islam party in a bad light, NPO Radio 1 program De Nieuws BV reports. DENK ultimately decided not to use the idea. PVV leader Geert Wilders is furious and is considering pressing charges against DENK.
The online ad consisted of a picture of Wilders with the text: 'After 15 March we will purify the Netherlands', according to De Nieuws BV.
People in the Netherlands are not very concerned about fake news and don't come across it very often. The Dutch also have a relatively high trust in their news media, according to the digital news report by Reuters and the University of Oxford.
According to the researchers, the Netherlands is "characterized by relatively high levels of trust in news and little concern about fake news".
Russia plans to bring 17 Syrian people, who were seen on footage of a believed poison gas attack in Douma, to the Netherlands. These people seen dying in the footage are alive and well, and in this way Russia wants to "unmask" the "unforgivable lies" over the incident, Alexander Shulgin, Russian ambassador to the OPWC, said to British news sender ITV News.
More and more countries are active in the increasingly complex fields of digital espionage and -sabotage, the Dutch general intelligence and security service AIVD warns in its annual report for 2017. The Netherlands is an interesting target for digital espionage because of its position as an international hub and as a member of the EU, NATO and this year also the UN Security Council, NOS reports.
The Tweede Kamer, the lower house of Dutch parliament, wants to get rid of the European Commission's task force against spreading fake news, the so-called EUvsDisinfo. This follows the task force naming a number of Dutch news services as spreaders of fake news, Het Parool reports.
The Dutch news services involved are NPO Radio 1, the Gelderlander, GeenStijl and The Post Online. According to the task force, pro-Russian propaganda gained the upper hand in a few reports from these organizations.
This week Facebook is launching an advertisement campaign in the Netherlands aimed at teaching Dutch Facebook users how to recognize fake news. Ads with tips on how to do so will appear on the social media platform itself. Facebook aims to reach "as good as all Dutch people who have Facebook" this week, NOS reports.
The campaign is based on a series of tips that can also be found elsewhere on Facebook. It includes tips like be skeptical about headlines, take a good look at the web address, and check the source.
American president Donald Trump gave what seemed to be, but wasn't actually, an apology for re-tweeting three anti-Islam videos by British far-right politician Jayda Fransen of party Britain First.
New United States ambassador to the Netherlands Pete Hoekstra apologized for falsely claiming in 2015 that politicians were set on fire in the Netherlands by Islamic fundamentalists and that there are no-go zones in the country in an interview with the Telegraaf on Saturday. Dutch parliamentarians find it good that he finally retracted these false statements. "Better late than never", PvdA MP Lilianne Ploumen said to the Telegraaf.
The U.S. State Department distanced itself this week from the factually inaccurate picture the new American Envoy to the Netherlands painted about Islamic fundamentalist rioting in the Netherlands in 2015. At an event that year, Peter Hoekstra declared the existence of areas in the Netherlands where politicians were set on fire and effective "no-go zones" that were too dangerous for authorities
The new American ambassador to the Netherlands, Peter Hoekstra, refused to comment at his inaugural press conference in Den Haag about his past allegations claiming politicians were set on fire in the Netherlands. During a press conference right after the ambassador handed over his credential to Dutch King Willem-Alexander, Hoekstra found himself dodging several question regarding his previous statements. "I won't comment on the matter anymore", he announced.
King Willem-Alexander lashed out at the prevalence of apparent fake news permeating through society in his annual Christmas Day address. "It is often difficult to distinguish facts and falsifications from one another. Nuance and empathy seem to be in jeopardy from the start, and Twitter sometimes makes the debate bitter," the king stated.
Pete Hoekstra, the new United States ambassador to the Netherlands, apologized for a "fake news" commotion he caused during an interview with Nieuwsuur. "I made certain remarks in 2015 and regret the exchange during the Nieuwsuur interview. Please accept my apology", he said on Twitter.
With the municipal elections and a referendum on the new Big Data law for the Dutch intelligence services coming up in March next year, the Dutch government has taken an official stance against fake news and foreign meddling and is taking more steps to battle these attempts to influence public opinion in the Netherlands.
