Having come home last week from a workshop with the topic “PR for NGOs” I couldn’t get the bubble story out of my head one of the lecturers mentioned briefly while discussing the media consumption habits of people in the virtual world.

These bubbles reminded me of an article on The Guardian’s Katharine Viner that appeared earlier this year. The general context was on how social media influences our reading habits but also the habits of advertisers and publishers.

Whereas classic newspapers open you a wide range of topics that you have to come by at least while browsing for the content you are looking for, social networks often let you select specifically what news you want to read and all the rest remains hidden.

And that’s what was called “bubble” in the workshop mentioned above. People shut themselves from topics, views, messages that do not correspond with their own views or which are simply not of their interest. If this goes for leisure we might all say, OK, fair enough. But for some – and hopefully not for too many – this will include politics, this will include more general topics of common interest, say like climate changes etc.

And these are obviously things that cannot be ignored by anyone in the world. And to avoid any self-filtering of news, to have a warranty of the sources you follow, it is important to subscribe and to fund good journalism and thus good research and reporting. Without funding, we all might become victims of dangerous, badly researched "only so-called journalism".

So for private or business stories, of course everyone should keep on publishing. But for the big research, for the neutral reporting and for uncovering stories that need to be, professional journalism needs to be supported and funded to keep alive the “4th Estate” in democracy.