A friend used to live in Holland, and he keeps a blog about what's going on and he has a link to Dutch TV.

Here is the link

Porn star campaigns against animal abuse

This story cracked me up... I am just going to paste it and then talk about it.

The Volkskrant today focuses on porn star Charisma Gold and her campaign against bestiality and animal porn, which she says has led to her receiving death threats.

Gold, photographed in her S&M cellar with a wall full of whips, says the Netherlands is one of the leading producers of animal porn for the simple reason that it is not illegal.

'It is completely sick what Dutch porn makers are producing,' she tells the paper, before going into the gory details.

Gold's lobbying has resulted in the Labour party submitting a bill banning sex with animals to parliament. MPs will vote on the issue at the end of this year.

The owner of porn company Book and Film international, which claims to be the world's number one in beastiality (their spelling) tells the paper that animals are never forced to perform for the cameras. His company produces 20 or so films a month. 'If the ban comes into force, I will have to close down,' he tells the paper.

I think that this is just a bit ironic, being as she had leather behind her, so I guess she is okay with killing animals and using there skin, but not having sex with them and filming it. I think that this also shows that these somewhat trivial and "celebrity" stories aren't just popular in the US, but around the world. I think that this also has to do with the people that run this website having a sense of humor and just wanting to spark a bit of conversation.

September 11th Coverage

I looked at a lot of the coverage of 9/11 in various Dutch newspapers, and the newspaper I got from Holland had coverage about 9/11. The Netherlands are involved in Iraq and Afghanistan, but mainly as a rebuilding effort (because of NATO). There were a surprising number of stories about the rebuilding Ground Zero efforts and about the plans the US has in the continuing war.

Corporate Media

This week in class we talked about corporate media in our country and around the world. Truth is, there would be no globalization with out these huge corporations dominating the market. My group talked about corporate media and its threat to democracy. I think that in today's world, corporate media is the only threat to democracy. There are too many cross ownerships that tarnish the media. All day we get the same news over and over again, throughout the day, and it seems to be a big facade. What's the point of even having a newscast unless you are going to play the essential role the media should play in democracies. Without a free press you can't have a true democracy, so what do we have here? We all need to accept the the news is not a money making business. Bottom line. If you try to focus on making money, you lose sight of what the true job of a reporter is: to seek the truth and report it.

Cabinet Works Towards Unemployment

This week in the Netherlands, the government is taking steps to lower unemployment rates. By 2011, they plan to spend 205 million Euros. With this money, they hope that 80% of the population will be employed by 2016. The Ministry of Social Affairs and Unemployment's minister Chap Hein Donner wrote that, "paid work is good for integration and emancipation."

I think it is very interesting that the government is so involved in the employment of the people. It makes sense to me, if the people are employed, they will contribute to the economy and keep it going strong, and if the government doesn't do anything, who will?

Globalization

Looking arround the internet for different websites to fine news from the Netherlands I am very impressed. One website, De Pers - a mjor newspaper in Amsterdam - is the same as looking at the LA Times or the New York Times. It is just in Dutch. They automatically update the website every few moments. They show when the story was initially posted (how many hours or minutes ago) and the last time it was updated.

I also found a website that has the news in English - its a bit easier for me to read (I don't have to have my handy translator near by). But this one is not a good at De Pers. There aren't any pictures that accompany the stories on the home page and it isn't as updated as often. But their archeives are easier to access, which is nice.

http://www.depers.nl

http://www.dutchnews.nl/

Introduction

For my global news media journal I chose the Netherlands (aka Holland) as my country to study. I chose the Netherlands because unlike most families, my family is not 100% sure where we are from: either Holland or England. Out of those two I know a lot less about Holland than I do England. It is somewhere I have always wanted to go. I don’t know much about this country (first hand at least) but I think that this will be an interesting way to discover another country and culture without actually going there. My boyfriend’s twin sister is in Holland now, and I asked her to bring back some newspapers from her trip for me, which will be great to see.

A little bit about Holland... it has a population of 16+ million people and is located in Western Europe, bordered by the North Sea and is inbetween Belgium and Germany. It is the European part of the Kingdome of the Netherlands, also of Aruba and Antilles. It is a constitutional monarchy, which is a constitutional syste, that acknoeledges a monarch as head of state (either elected or hereditary).

I am looking forward to utilizing the Library Press Display database to view some of the newspapers that are on newsstands in Holland. I think that this will also be interesting to see how (if at all) they format their newspapers differently and how they cover and structure their stories. I also want to (hopefully) compare the news coverage on various stories both here as well as there. For example, 9/11 is coming up and it will be interesting to see how they cover that story (if at all).