How to Protect the Media in Eroding Democracies

Drawing lessons from Hungary, India, Poland and Sri Lanka, Tudor argues that independent media survive democratic erosion by winning digital distribution, building networks before crisis, diversifying revenue, maintaining legal-defense capacity, and connecting abstract institutional decline to everyday harms.

The essay treats media not as isolated outlets but as an ecosystem whose reporting, legal protection, finance and distribution must reinforce one another. Cases of collapse and recovery show why waiting until capture is advanced leaves citizens with fewer credible ways to see and contest power.