Natalie Fenton, Democratic Delusions: How the Media Hollows Out Democracy and What We Can Do About It

To read mainstream news in 2025 is to feel the dread of watching democracy, at least the version of it we have known, teetering on the edge of an abyss.One potential savior, we are often told, is better media, particularly journalism that informs a citizenry without fear or favor and relentlessly holds power to account.The relationship between the two-journalism and democratic rule by the people, for the people-is often treated as a given, but is it warranted?Is what we call "democracy" even democratic to begin with?In Democratic Delusions: How the Media Hollows Out Democracy and What We Can Do About It, author Natalie Fenton answers the latter with a clear no, while examining the relationship between media and democracy in depth.Fenton, author of several books on media and politics and professor of media and communications at Goldsmiths, University of London, wastes no time getting to the point, arguing immediately that "our major media outlets and digital intermediaries are captured by global capitalism to the detriment of democracy" (p. 1).Rather than clinging to what remains of our media