Racial Harmony on TV Gets Subsidies

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The Hague spent more than 11.8 million euros subsidizing public and commercial TV programming in the last two years for, among other things, showing black and white people getting along with one another.

The justice ministry program was discovered by the newspaper De Volkskrant.

It distributed 610,500 euros to commercial broadcaster SBS6 for programs in which immigrants were shown in a positive context. A weather program on the same channel got 12,500 euros because it was filmed at a tennis club “where there is good integration between people of different cultures.”

In 2006, the government subsidized a total of 75 co-productions with a total of 5,180,208 euros. In 2007, the government accepted 43 applications, for 4,350,419 euros. Additionally, 793,295 euros was spent in 2006 and 1,496,335 euros in 2007 from the foreign ministry’s Europa fund on TV programs in praise of the environment, development aid and European cooperation.

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