Bette Dam

Bette Dam is an investigative journalist and scholar whose work examines journalism, power, and representation. She grew up in a conservative Protestant family in a close-knit village in the north of the Netherlands, where community life was central and the minority language Frisian was spoken. This early experience of cultural and linguistic marginality has strongly shaped her sensitivity to exclusion, authority, and voice.

Dam holds a PhD on structural biases in Western mainstream journalism, combining autoethnography, content analysis, and media theory. Her research critically examines how elite newsroom cultures shape sourcing practices, narrative framing, and professional norms, and how these dynamics influence which stories are told and which remain unheard.

She is the author of two critically acclaimed nonfiction books, has delivered a widely viewed TED Talk on journalism and power, and served for seven years as a professor at Sciences Po, where she taught journalism and media studies to international cohorts of students.

Her work bridges academic research and journalistic practice, combining lived experience, empirical analysis, and a commitment to more inclusive, reflective, and accountable forms of journalism.