(Under construction) About Dr. Bette Dam
What should I tell you first?
My institutional CV—grants, universities, publications?
Or my lived one?
In my PhD, I argue that the latter matters too. So let me start there.
I did not grow up in a way that naturally leads to journalism. I come from a non-elite family, in a part of the Netherlands (Fryslân) often stereotyped in the press. A place shaped by farms, cow trading, conservative ideas, religious life, and a detailed, lived knowledge of village dynamics.
For a long time, I did not see this background as relevant (See layer 1 in my PhD). Only when I began to study journalism itself in 2019 did I realize that it shaped everything: how I observed, who I spoke to, and why my reporting sometimes led me to different conclusions than dominant narratives in international media.
For over fifteen years, I reported from Afghanistan, often spending years on a single investigation. Again and again, I found that what I observed did not fully match what was published in leading Western media. Suddenly relaying these findings in live-tv-shows wans’t always comfortable. That gap stayed with me.
Over time, my work began to shift. I started teaching Deconstructing Narratives at Sciences Po in Paris, working with a highly diverse group of students whose questions pushed me further. I was then offered the opportunity to pursue a fully funded PhD at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB)—a rare space for this kind of inquiry.
I had one central question: who are we as journalists? Are we who we think we are? And are we truly free?
I began to apply the same investigative methods I had used in the field to journalism itself—the profession I care deeply about. That journey resulted in a PhD that examines how our news system works, and why it sometimes produces clarity, and at other times confusion or distrust.
This Substack is the online home of that work. You can think of it as a kind of dinner table.
The PhD is the front door—a place to start, with a clear summary of the research (link). But most of what happens here takes place around the table: an ongoing, structured conversation about how journalism functions, and how it might change.
What we bring to the table are questions many people feel, but don’t always articulate:
What is your lived experience—and how does it shape the way you see and report?
Can you write what you want, or are there limits to that freedom? (This is what I describe as Layer 1 in my PhD.)
Why do American sources often dominate coverage of places like Afghanistan (see Layer 3)?
How does that dynamic play out in other topics?
Is the elite aware of itself as an elite—and how does that shape what becomes visible as “news”?
And more fundamentally: what are the origins of American journalism? Can we really say it has been free from the start?
This is not another space for loose media debates or opinion-driven analysis.
The conversation here is structured and grounded in data. My PhD forms the red line throughout—a framework to return to, to test, to challenge, and to refine.
It does not claim to have all the answers. But it offers a way to ask better questions—and to examine journalism with more precision.
This is an invitation.
A table where different experiences can come together—carefully, critically, and in good faith. A space where people can join, speak, and feel safe to question what we often take for granted.
You are very welcome to take a seat.
