I suppose the title reveals my concerns, which are more about the former than the latter. We’ll be talking about it in Perugia this week at the International Journalism Festival.

Here’s a reading list:

Journalism was long ago seen as a fourth estate, an extra-parliamentary representative cohort.

In 19C political theory, the press is seen as a necessary element in a representative democracy.

In the ancient world, though there might be, and often was, great individual or local independence, there could be nothing like a regulated popular government beyond the bounds of a single city-community; because there did not exist the physical conditions for the formation and propagation of a public opinion, except among those who could be brought together to discuss public matters in the same agora. This obstacle is generally thought to have ceased by the adoption of the representative system. But to surmount it completely, required the press, and even the newspaper press, the real equivalent, though not in all respects an adequate one, of the Pnyx and the Forum. (John Stuart Mill, Considerations on Representative Government, 1861)

The press is no good in the role having been captured by corporate interests, UK edition (Julian Petley, Fourth Rate Estate).

The press could never fulfill the role since citizens can never play the role demanded of them by democractic theory (Jorn Henrik Petersen, Lippmann Revisited, 2003).

The “informed citizen” (i.e. the consumer of journalism) is not a requirement of democracy (Michael Schudson America’s Ignorant Voters, 2000)

The decline in the journalism industry is not a crisis for democracy.

Journalism’s role is important and worthy of public funding.

Please add any interesting links in the comments.