Time to think carefully about what media you support

Vote with your wallet

The media is as important to a democracy as the politicians.

It is the institutional representation of our ability to question what governments do in our name, and it is the key way in which we protect ourselves against a corrupt government.

Media require that institutionalisation—from legal protections to social license—in order to be powerful enough to stand up to the other sources of power in society, and this is why, as strong a supporter as I am of social media and citizens using modern digital tools—like the platform you are reading on now—to involve themselves in political discussion, I still recognise that a viable fourth estate is essential to democracy, and I am therefore happy to spend what I can each year supporting various outlets (and individuals).

In the era of digitisation, as the media business model has shifted to a massive reliance on subscriptions and memberships and the like, we-the-people are even more invested in the success of the work of journalism because we ar…