Despite Everything

Authoritarian populists are on the rise. Fake news items and disinformation campaigns are rampant. And what is journalism doing? How is it fighting back against these currents? It’s limping from one crisis to the next. There may be more media outlets, but their budgets are shrinking. Media owners are trying to stem the bleeding by publishing shrill opinion pieces and soft content . But this process of »digital tabloidization« plays into the hands of populists, who use the same stylistic devices in their political messaging: exaggeration, manufactured scandals, and moral outrage.

Roger de Weck loves journalism as a profession. He knows it inside and out – having worked as a newspaper editor, a broadcaster, a reporter and a presenter. And he is worried about the fact that the laws by which the media business operates and the fundamental principles of journalism are growing further and further apart. Seeking to buck this trend, de Weck proposes his principle of »despite everything«: researching, assessing the reliability of sources, staying true to yourself – despite budget cuts, despite everything. But how does that work? The author offers some practical examples of how to strengthen journalism. Because without the stubborn, often unwelcome intervention of journalists, democracy falls apart.