The relationship between democracy and professional news media is currently being profoundly questioned, however, there is a lack of standards to determine their proper political role. This working paper sketches a ba-sic normative theory of the press in a democracy. Jour-nalism is reconsidered as a distinctive practice both informed by professional norms and protected by par-ticular constitutional provisions. It is argued that the press, defined as the collective of journalists playing a special political role in a democracy, remains indis-pensable because it constitutes an informal power that holds formal power-holders accountable and serves the citizens’ basic right to be informed. Even news me-dia organisations might be legitimately partisan under specific conditions. When constitutional democracy it-self is under threat, journalists, the press, and media organisations must defend the very structures which sustain reasonable pluralism. The rise of social media has not changed this normative picture but has aggra-vated both the normative and the practical challenges.