The interactions between politicians, the public and the media form a triangle that is discussed frequently, not least by political scientists and communications scholars (for example, Esser and Strömbäck, 2014). The influence of the media on voting behaviour, in particular, is a recurring topic on the research agenda (for example, Walgrave et al, 2008b; Hooghe et al, 2011). Conversely, if policy, and any decision that goes with it, forms the research focus, the explanandum is all the more complex, with the result that the media are not included in the research design. Wolfe and colleagues (2013) deplore this approach, and argue that the public agenda, the news media and the policy agenda should all be taken into account within the same study. However, patterns within these relationships are difficult to determine unambiguously, especially because the news media shape both the input (for example, the salience and definition of issues to be dealt with) and the output (for example, communicating policy decisions to the general public) of the political system. As a result, there is plenty to explore within this underdeveloped area of research. This chapter aims to offer an overview of the state of the art in the research literature on the complex relationship between media and policy in Belgium.

The chapter starts with a description of the media landscape in Belgium. Just as in most other countries, it is increasingly characterised by media concentration in the private sector, whereby progressively fewer individuals or organisations control increasing shares of the mass media. A second, more unique, feature is the prevalence of public broadcasting in Belgium, especially in Flanders. However, the most unique characteristic is that these government-funded public broadcasters have generally been conceived to play a key role in the construction of the Dutch-speaking (Flanders) and French-speaking (Wallonia and French-speaking Brussels) communities’ identities and public spheres in Belgium, and have less effect on national identity and public sphere than one might expect (Sinardet, 2012). Against this backdrop, the chapter looks at the impact of private sector media concentration on the diversity of news reporting (for example, on policy topics) the depiction of ethnic minority people in the media and their representation in media organisations. Media concentration also evidently underlies the gradual depoliticisation and ‘depillarisation’ of the Belgian press.