The Dutch Caribbean: A News Desert in a Tropical Paradise
By Lisette Reuvers
Not many Dutch in Europe know about the problems and struggles of three faraway islands governed by their own country. Improved media coverage could change that.
When Sip Swierstra moved to Saba twelve years ago, he noticed that there was no news media on this far-flung Caribbean island. “People would just pin notices and messages to trees for others to read,” he said. A local radio station was accessible on only half of the island and the sole printed newspaper was delivered by airplane from a nearby island.
A former civil servant, Mr Swierstra chose the Caribbean for his retirement. In 2009, he founded Saba News, a non-profit information and news website. Ten years later, the portal is read by the majority of the 2,000 or so people who live on the island. But in spite of the portal’s popularity, the island is still experiencing a troubling undersupply of independent journalism, a reality that other Caribbean islands belonging, like Saba, to the Netherlands, are grappling with.
Where Independent Journalism is Social Suicide
Saba is a tropical volcanic island, full of hiking trails running through the rainforest, stunning ocean views and sunny weather all year long. Few people know that the island, located almost 7,000 kilometers away and five time zones apart from Amsterdam, is a special Dutch municipality. Saba became an integral part of the Netherlands in 2010 when the country of the Netherlands Antilles was dissolved following growing local calls for secession on some of the islands. Bonaire and Sint Eustatius (locally known as Statia), two other Antilles islands, opted for the same status as Saba.
The Dutch Caribbean islands are all relatively small. Bonaire is the biggest one, with just under 20,000 inhabitants. In spite of their similar political status, they differ immensely. While on Saba and Statia, English is the main language, 800 kilometers away on Bonaire most people speak Papiamentu, a creole language. The Dutch government is the main legislator on the islands, but day-to-day governing is done by island council, which are elected directly by islanders and headed by an appointed island governor. Compared with Dutch municipalities, these councils have more tasks and higher autonomy.
However, because of corruption and neglect in carrying out their jobs, the island council on Statia was replaced by representatives of the Dutch government. But issues such as financial mismanagement, intimidation and lawlessness, the reasons why the government takeover happened on Statia, were hardly reported in the media. “Media barely plays a role in politics,” says Koos Sneek, a local Statian politician and entrepreneur.
Lacking a local newspaper, people on Statia rely on news brought in by the Daily Herald, a newspaper printed in the neighboring Sint Maarten, an island shared by the Dutch and French. The Herald, however, devotes only a couple of short articles in each issue to Statia. Local radio stations mostly air music. Independent political news reporting is completely absent. Instead, press releases from political parties are copy-pasted and presented as news items, Mr Sneek said.
Saba is also facing a dearth of independent reporting, but for different reasons. Its population is so small that journalism is hardly needed. Most of the people on the island are friends on Facebook where a variety of announcements ranging from availability of home-cooked meals to political posts are shared. “The information needs on Saba are different: if something happens people know about it in no time,” Mr Swierstra said. “They don’t need the news for that.”
Therefore, Saba News doesn’t carry out news reporting and avoids political coverage, which is limited to the letters-to-the-editor section. As most people on Saba know of each other and about each other, political discussions often veer off into personal issues. Reporting on local politics would be “social suicide,” Mr Swierstra said. The website therefore sticks to its original mission: making information sharing easier for islanders. “I am not a journalist, I just run a platform for people to share what they want to share: notices by the public body, businesses and individuals,” Mr Swierstra said.
On Bonaire, the situation is better, according to a report from Caribbean Network, a news and current affairs portal publishing in English, Dutch and Papiamentu. Bonaire has its own commercially funded newspapers, radio stations and a widely read news website. “Newspapers are very popular on Bonaire,” said Chris, a young Bonairean who moved to the Netherlands for his studies. “Bonaireans read local news and are also quite up to date when it comes to news from the rest of the Netherlands.” However, even on Bonaire media need to further improve and better training for local journalists should be provided, journalists say.
Good for the Holiday Pages
But lack of independent reporting in the three Dutch Caribbean islands (Bonaire, Statia and Saba) is only part of the problem. Coverage of the islands in the Dutch media in Europe is equally, if not more, important as voters in the European part of the Netherlands need to be properly informed about the BES-islands (as they are legally known in the Netherlands) to be able to hold the Dutch national government accountable for its policies in the Caribbean.
More coverage would help the islands boost their political clout. Together, Bonaire, Statia and Saba have a mere 25,000 inhabitants, enough votes for just half a seat in the Dutch parliament. Without the help of European Dutch voters, the islands can’t get an MP to stand up for their interests in parliament.
Mr Sneek has experienced that himself. He ran for office in previous Dutch national elections, but failed to get enough votes to be elected. “Most Dutch people are barely aware of the BES-islands, most don’t even know that the islands [have been] public bodies of the Netherlands since 2010,” he said. Bonairean student Chris adds: “Those with a faintest clue only know Bonaire’s neighboring islands, close to the coast of Venezuela, as they are popular holiday destinations.”
Scarce media coverage bears much of the blame. The five biggest online media platforms by audience in the Netherlands published on average 11 articles about the BES-islands in 2018. Most of these articles were about just two topics: the Dutch government removing the Statia island council and the aftermaths of Hurricane Irma, which hit Statia and Saba in 2017.
Some of the major problems the islands are faced with, such as poverty and inequality, are hardly publicized in Europe. For example, not many know that child support has been only recently introduced on the islands and no minimum social aid is guaranteed. On the other hand, the cost of living there is extremely high. To visit a notary, for example, Statians have to travel to the Sint Maarten island, 30 km away, a trip worth US$ 214.
Living in a Happy Nation
Improved coverage of the Dutch Caribbean would help the islanders, but setting up a media outlet on the islands is a herculean task. A commercially funded news medium would never survive in Saba, for example, as there are just too few people and local businesses have no need to advertise other than on their own Facebook page, Mr Swierstra said.
A solution would be a government-subsidized outlet staffed by journalists with ties to the island, but not fully immersed in the island’s life, which would give them the distance needed to report independently. There is one such media outlet in the region, Caribbean Network, a website run by the Dutch public broadcaster. However, the portal devotes little space to BES-islands and sometimes publishes stories that show no understanding of the island’s context, Mr Swierstra says.
But even without journalism, Sabans are happy on their small and beautiful island where they know everyone and can live as they like, without much involvement of the Dutch authorities. If islanders need a service or are bothered by something, all they need to do is to talk to the local aldermen whom they regularly greet in the grocery store.
Lisette Reuvers is a student of the Mundus Masters in Public Policy, with an interest in education, development and critical journalism.
This article was documented and written as part of the Practicum Class conducted by Marius Dragomir at the CEU School of Public Policy (SPP).
