Welcome to our January 2025 Newsletter!
A flourishing independent public interest media is a key pillar of a functioning democracy.
Journalism which investigates without fear or favour, and which verifies and carefully cross-checks information, is a bulwark against political and corporate power. It also protects citizens from disinformation and propaganda.
But in Europe, as elsewhere, public interest journalism faces multiple pressures: economic, political, legal, as well as those created by Big Tech, such as search engines which limit traffic to their sites, and AI platforms which try to exploit their intellectual property. In 2025, these threats look set to mutate, as a recent Reuters Institute report suggests.
The report on trends and predictions in the media highlights, among other things: “the growing power of an alternative news ecosystem that includes partisan personalities and creators that often operate outside journalistic norms, and that some say have now eclipsed the mainstream media in terms of both influence and trust.”
High calibre
Against this bleak backdrop, however, our media grantee partners continue to thrive, producing public interest journalism of exceptional quality. This month’s newsletter’s feature on our newest partner, Greek non-profit media outlet Solomon, vividly illustrates this.
So does this brief snapshot of recent news from some of our other media grantee partners, which you can find in the “From the Fontline” section below.:
The importance of supporting such work is abundantly clear – and we’re pleased therefore, to launch our second ever open call to support public interest media (see more information in the section “Civitates in Movement” below).
Facts under attack
We’re under no illusions about the challenges ahead.
Facebook is dispensing with fact-checkers; Elon Musk, the world’s richest man has become the biggest spreader of anti-immigrant conspiracy theories on his own platform X, according to an analysis by Bloomberg of more than 53,000 posts sent from his account.
“Facts are under attack, as well as the methods used to place them at the heart of public debate,” said a recent Le Monde article.
Our grantee partners are showing an admirable commitment to defending both.
ELISA PETER
Director, Civitates
Civitates’ latest media grantee partner, Greek outlet Solomon, is producing award-winning journalism against the odds. In this month’s feature article, Managing Ddirector Iliana Papangeli talks about the organisation’s remarkable origin story, state surveillance’s impact on Solomon’s journalists, and how they’re connecting with their audience away from the toxicity of social media. Read full article.
In Romania, PressOne’s gradual move away from long-form journalism towards video content which reaches younger audiences is paying dividends: a recent video exposing the authorities use of misinformation to support flawed drug policies attracted almost 500,000 views in January on Instagram alone.
In Hungary, Direkt36 has just won the Transparency-Soma Award for the third time in four years. It’s the country’s most prestigious journalistic accolade, and Direkt36 won it for exposing how EU investigators who were probing Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s son-in-law were put under surveillance, sparking unprecedented infighting in Hungary’s secret service.
The Investigative Reporting Project Italy’s (IRPI) findings on the daily stresses that freelance journalists face has inspired one of the Italian Journalists Association’s regional divisions to create a training course on journalist’s mental health.
In France, Fond pour une presse libre is valiantly defending one of the cornerstones of press freedom: journalists’ right to protect confidential sources. This is currently threatened in a case brought by the French justice system, and along with others they have written an open letter to the Prime Minister, ministers of Culture, Justice, Army and Interior Affairs, calling for the law to be overhauled.
Democracy Reporting International (DRI) has produced an important study analysing the extent to which Large Language Models (chatbots) allow pluralism. Read their conclusions here.
A new report by AI Forensics’ uncovers the glaring double standard in Meta’s content moderation practices. Pay-to-Play: Meta’s Community (double) Standards on Pornographic Ads reveals that despite the platform’s strict Community Standards, over 3,000 pornographic advertisements featuring explicit adult content have been approved and distributed through the Meta Advertisement in the past year.
Amnesty International’s Austria Protect the Protest campaign, which has entered its third year, is partially funded by Civitates.The campaign, which officially kicked off on January 22 on the first anniversary of Austria’s “EBM, Ermittlungs- und Beschwerdestelle Misshandlungsvorwürfe” – the Investigation and Complaints Office for Allegations of Maltreatment by the police, is demanding that police officers on duty must be clearly identifiable.
The Butterfly Project, run by our grantee partner Dokustelle in partnership with ZARA, addresses racism and discrimination young people from ethnic minority and immigrant backgrounds face in Austria using an intersectional approach in a series of videos.They can be found here.
LEFÖ, an Austrian organisation by and for migrant women, collaborated with the Peregrina association (a counselling centre for women) in the run-up to the 2025 Vienna elections, to run a project entitled “InterWienieren – A manifesto of the non-addressed”. It uses the concept of an imaginary political formation, the Fantasia Migranta, to translate themes such as social justice, criticism of racism, feminist practices and democratization processes into artistic interventions.
Point de Contact, a French association dedicated to protecting users from the excesses inherent in the evolution and development of the internet, is calling on all content platforms and hosts to connect to its DISRUPT database. The DISRUPT platform enables victims of the dissemination of intimate content without their consent to report published content so that it can be removed, and/or to prevent unwanted dissemination at a later date.
Off to a great start!
We have a great year ahead planned for 2025, including working hard to increase our grant making budget, and expanding and diversifying the range of Civitates’ funder partners.
We start off the year with two open calls.
Our second ever open call to support public interest media in Europe was launched on 31 January 2025. We invite non-profit media organisations from Hungary, Poland, Italy, Spain, Bulgaria, Slovakia and Croatia to apply. We are holding a Q&A webinar for applicants on February 17, which will also later be available on our YouTube channel. The deadline is March 2 2025, 23:59 (CET).
Two weeks later, on 17 February, we will launch our Tech & Democracy open call to support organisations working to make online spaces safer,more trustworthy and inclusive in Hungary, Spain, Italy, Poland, Slovakia, Romania, and the Netherlands. Save the date and your spot for our Q&A webinar on 26 February here.
17-20 / 03
The European Economic and Social Committee hosts its annual Civil Society Week in Brussels. This year the event will explore how to strengthen cohesion and participation in polarised societies, and a diverse range of civil society stakeholders from Europe and beyond will gather to engage in critical debates, share best practices, and collaborate to develop solutions that foster social cohesion and strengthen democratic engagement in these testing times. Get the details.
Calls:
- The European Commission aims to support projects that promote a free, diverse and pluralistic media environment and/or address structural challenges of media sectors. Details here.
- The Internet Freedom Fund / OTF supports innovative internet freedom projects, including technology development, research, digital security projects, and convenings. Details here.
- The “Boosting Fact-checking Activities in Europe” Call for Proposals is open to consortiums of fact-checking organisations located in EU, EFTA and UK that play a key role in limiting the negative effects of disinformation on the public discourse and democratic processes. Details here
- The Media Visibility Accelerator (MVA) team is constantly looking for new opportunities to engage with and assist independent media organizations and those that support them. Details here.
- JournalismFund Europe is offering Professional Development Grants for Environmental Journalism. They will enable activities and support services for environmental investigative journalism as a whole. Details here.
- Fond pour une press libre (the Free Press Fund) continues its mission of supporting independent pluralistic media with a call for projects to fund. The deadline for submitting applications is Friday, February 21, 2025 at midnight. See details of criteria and application forms are here, there and here.
- The Alliance for Socially Engaged Arts Fellowship will welcome up to 15 leaders working across diverse artistic disciplines and societal issues to work together to create greater impact within their local communities and the wider arts sector in Europe. Applications for the 2025 cohort close on February 24. Details are here.
JOBS:
- Civitates is looking for a new Programme and Grant Officer.
- Civitates is looking for a new Impact and Learning Manager.
SUBSCRIBE TO CIVITATES’ MONTHLY NEWSLETTER
