Democracy without Journalism? Confronting the Misinformation Society

Pickard's argument is structural: the crisis of misinformation cannot be adequately addressed at the level of individual false claims or bad-faith actors while the structural conditions that generate information poverty — the collapse of local journalism, the concentration of platform power, the defunding of public media — remain intact. The book is a sustained critique of what Pickard calls the "marketplace of ideas" framework, which treats information problems as distortions of an otherwise functional market rather than as systemic failures requiring systemic intervention.

The analysis is grounded in American media political economy but has clear implications for the UK and European contexts. For policy advisers working on media ecosystem health, resilience to disinformation, and the relationship between journalism and democratic function, Pickard provides the structural framing that platform-focused accounts systematically miss.