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The media landscape in Belgium

Belgium's media landscape is dominated by the regional and cultural division within the country. The French-speaking region, Wallonia, the Dutch-speaking Flanders and the small, German-speaking region each have their own strong media. There are no national media.

Manneken Pis
Foto: Francisco Antunes, Lizenz: Creative Commons by/2.0

Belgium is one of the most densely cabled countries in the world, with almost 100 percent coverage. In Wallonia, the audiovisual media are more subject to foreign – especially French – influence than in Flanders. Private operators are particularly successful here. The RTL group is market leader in Wallonia, ahead of the state broadcaster RTBF. In Flanders, on the other hand, the state-run broadcaster VRT has been able to maintain its leading position against the commercial competition.

There is also a noticeable north-south divide when it comes to media use. While the Flemish tend to be newspaper readers, the Walloons watch more television. As a result the Walloon newspapers have been hardest hit by the rise of the new media. Their circulation has dwindled by almost 26 percent in the past 15 years, while in Flanders it went down by only nine percent. The influence of print media on public opinion in Flanders therefore remains very considerable, with leading articles and commentaries playing an important role in public debate.

Belgian newspapers have for the most part been able to break free of their conventional, line-toeing image. In 1999, the Flemish quality newspaper De Standaard and its Walloon counterpart La Libre Belgique gave up their ties to the Church and the Christian Democratic party and have now adopted an independent course. The pioneers here were the openly anti-clerical Flemish paper De Morgen and Wallonia's Le Soir.

When it comes to the new media the Belgians are mainly passive users. Blogs still play a secondary role. However recently the daily and weekly newspapers in particular have boosted their Internet presence and now offer leading intellectuals a platform, also in the form of blogs.

This country's media at euro|topics