Chapter 1. Democracy at stake : On the need of news media monitoring

In this chapter, we discuss why news media monitoring is needed and propose a theoretical and methodological framework to implement it, which underlies the Media for Democracy Monitor (MDM) research project. The framework is derived from normative theories of the roles of news media and journalism in liberal democracies. These are roles related to core dimensions of democracy, namely freedom, equality, and control, which reunite elements from liberal and republican theories. The context of this discussion is the increasing popular suspicion regarding liberal democracy and the crisis around news media as institutions. We conclude with a brief reflection on the results of the 2021 MDM research project, which identified some worrisome developments in news media performance but, overall, stability in the last decade, despite the disruption caused by digitalisation