Across many Western countries, a growing trend is emerging: journalists are gradually abandoning their role as impartial narrators to become central figures in public debate, often adopting the posture of opinion leaders.
The result is an information landscape that is increasingly less neutral, more ideologically charged, and shaped by personal agendas.
In Italy, this dynamic is especially evident in talk shows, where discussions are less likely to feature experts or direct witnesses, and more likely to revolve around other journalists.
The outcome is a self-referential loop that prioritises individual visibility over a genuine plurality of perspectives.
France follows a similar pattern: programmes like C dans l’air or TPMP regularly spotlight a handful of recurring commentators.
In Spain, El Intermedio and Al Rojo Vivo operate along the same lines.
In the United Kingdom, investigative journalism is often sidelined in favour of commentary, with only a few exceptions, such as certain BBC broadcasts.
In the United States, the phenomenon has become systemic: networks like Fox News and MSNBC build their programming around ideological narratives, more concerned with affirming the audience’s beliefs than with challenging them.
Though it manifests in different forms, this model shares common mechanisms: it shrinks democratic space and erodes collective critical thinking.
As Noam Chomsky has noted, the appearance of diversity in opinion is often tolerated only within pre-approved boundaries, creating the illusion of pluralism while subtly reinforcing deeper forms of control.
A healthy media environment should instead provide verifiable data, ask uncomfortable questions, and give voice to those with expertise or lived experience of political and social decisions.
When journalism loses this mediating function, information becomes a vehicle for vanity and ideological entertainment — in Italy as elsewhere.