Beware the ‘Populist Bump’
Last week, Der Spiegel faced a media firestorm for its cover page placement of lead Alternativ fur Deutschland (AfD) Saxony-Anhalt candidate Ulrich Siegmund. Despite the accompanying article’s critical tone, commentators from renowned center-left media outlets lambasted the publication, arguing that it served to bolster the reputation of the far-right party, as the AfD actively celebrated the attention as “very good advertising.” Siegmund was later photographed distributing signed copies of the magazine.
But the array of commentaries lambasting Spiegel’s publication were hypocritical. The Hamburg outlet is not alone in relying on the AfD to sell copies and attract clicks. For the last few years, and particularly since AfD’s explosive February 2025 election success, German newspapers have fixated on the rise of the far-right party – its regional candidates, its national leader, its strategy, its controversies, its plans. Party leader Alice Weidel and local stars Bjorn Hocke and Ulrich Siegmund have become established political entities, garnering more name-brand recognition than politicians in Germany’s governing coalition. As a result, mainstream and legacy news outlets are allies in the AfD’s campaign strategy of drawing negative attention and provoking outrage even as these outlets purport to criticize a democratic threat in good faith while reaping the benefits of political drama.
They’re not alone. In Israel, the provocative statements and stunts by far-right politicians like National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Religious Zionism MK Zvi Sukkot continuously make headlines in left-liberal publications both in Israel and abroad following purposefully outrage-inducing behavior, from building moats around prisons that they aim to fill with crocodiles to destroying a memorial to West Bank Palestinians – some of whom were terrorists – killed by the IDF. The frequency of coverage is such that Ben-Gvir is probably the only Israeli politician with name recognition in foreign publications, besides Prime Minister Benjamin Netanayahu.
By continually documenting and analyzing a party or individual’s threat to democratic institutions, newspapers become bound to the constant presence of the very actors they criticize. The symbiosis of center and left-wing news outlets with far-right populists was famously illustrated with the “Trump Bump” following US President Donald Trump’s first inauguration in 2017, which drove record subscription numbers for legacy publications including the Washington Post and The New York Times. These outlets thrived as purported foils to the hysteria and poor governance in Trump’s first term, but their wall-to-wall coverage, though almost uniformly negative, ultimately normalized his political omnipresence and arguably paved the way for his eventual reelection.
The reason for this toxic symbiosis is technological and economic. Decentralized social media platforms have eroded journalism’s historic role as an information gatekeeper. Previously, news editors held the collective power of “strategic silence,” and could boycott harmful statements by a political actor. Social media has eliminated this ability, with populist politicians posting or streaming their provocations directly to an audience. Newsrooms are then trapped in a reactive loop: if they remain silent, they cede the narrative and fear they may seem disconnected. If they cover it, they amplify it.
This loss of authority is weaponized by the internet economy, where newspapers compete for attention through algorithms that favor negativity, outrage, and conflict. In this environment, according to a 2025 report by the Max Planck Institute, news headlines across the board have become more personal, negative, and dramatic to drive social media engagement metrics. This competition has also created the phenomenon of “churnalism,” where desk-bound digital reporters track and rewrite viral social media trends to piggyback on algorithmic visibility. But even as news begins to resemble other forms of floating digital content, consumers still prefer the latter: according to the Reuters 2026 Digital News Report, for the first time ever, more people use social media networks than traditional news sources (websites, print, TV, or radio) for their news. This creates even more pressure on subscription-dependent outlets to rely on the minority of dedicated readers that frequently comment, share, and engage with articles, and create articles primarily to encourage this engagement. The most effective form of this is to present articles on issues that readers are already familiar with and feel strongly about, instead of research or reporting on new and unfamiliar topics. Meaning: newspapers no longer seek to present anything new, and lean heavily on continuously presenting the same conflicts and global protagonists to a public they hope will respond angrily or enthusiastically. This is more akin to a TV show than a newspaper, and also explains why TV reboots and endless series extensions are becoming more and more common.
Different countries’ media ecosystems struggle with the above to various degrees. In the US, while Biden’s election in 2020 ushered in a “Trump Slump” as governance became more normalized, Trump’s reelection for a second term did not bring another subscriber boost due to both broader news fatigue and increased financial and institutional pressures on the press. (While the New York Times did report increases in subscribers, it was likely not due to its reporting but to aggressive promotion of a “bundle” of games, recipes, and other lifestyle add-ons.)
The media environment in Germany is very different than in the US. To their credit, German public broadcasters have exercised significant restraint in reporting on the populist and highly polarizing AfD. Yet the constant focus on the AfD in Germany from private, subscriber-based outlets across the political spectrum undermines this discipline, granting the AfD an importance and inevitability which transformed into a self-fulfilling prophecy. The constant buildup to elections where the AfD holds a significant lead, opinions on its potential ban, worst-case-scenario explanations of AfD policies, and endless hand-wringing commentaries about “what went wrong” seem less about informing the public and more about milking a content cash cow. Ultimately, whatever the intent, and whatever the substance, constant coverage functions as the lifeblood of populist momentum.
The US media’s fixation on Trump and its adoption of the role of anti-establishment resistance force, rather than an ethical and objective reporting outlet, ultimately contributed to his reelection and the introduction of real institutional measures to defund independent public journalism. Ultimately, as happened in the US, an AfD victory could ultimately result in funding cuts for the very public broadcasters that refused to give it airtime, undermining journalism writ broadly, but probably boosting the profit margins of private outlets eager for doomsday headlines.
In Israel, left-wing outlets that allow Ben-Gvir or Religious Zionism to dominate several days of coverage waste time and resources by stating the obvious and neglecting to promote or discuss issues of more substance. Too much dependence on far-right actors for headlines, and the framing of a news outlet as “resistance” to fascism or anti-democratic forces, raises the question of what, exactly, the role of the newspaper will be in better political times. If the only news is destructive populism, what will be the point of journalism if populists are outvoted? Will all liberal newspapers just become vehicles for recipes, travel tips, Wordle, and a handful of selective-outrage-inducing reports featuring the villains and heroes readers already know and love (or love to hate)?
The failure to cultivate a liberal journalism that succeeds without populism and attracts readers without clickbait is a betrayal of a free press itself. Good journalists must reclaim “strategic silence” and reject outrage-inducing headlines. Stunts by provocateurs should either be ignored or given minimal coverage, and reports and investigations into important events and substantive issues should be prioritized over fanning public anxiety.
Journalists are not activists. They are neither the “resistance” nor the “establishment.” Journalism that tries to mimic superficial, emotionally charged social media content in the battle for attention ends up both sacrificing accuracy and undermining itself. It also ends up losing.
The only way to save journalism is to emphasize neutrality, accuracy and long-term democratic hygiene over the virtue-signaling and short-term metrics of the attention economy. Otherwise, it will become fully irrelevant.
