Reappraising Journalism's Normative Foundations

The claim that journalism provides important nourishment for democratic life is remarkably resilient, despite criticisms emanating from a range of perspectives which highlight just how problematic this claim is. The central argument of this chapter is that the key normative claim of journalism, that being journalism’s centrality to proper functioning democracy, is in need of significant re-consideration and reappraisal. In arguing for this, I suggest that we need to think more creatively about the very nature of democracy and democratic agency before we can hope to ‘re-think’ journalism.