Democracy is in global retreat: for the first time in more than two decades autocracies outnumber democracies. This democratic decline is primarily driven by attacks on civil society and electoral integrity – and the media.
Independent media is widely seen as democracy’s canary in the coalmine: when its freedoms are threatened, so is democracy’s overall health. Public interest media is often a last line of democratic defence – putting vital information into the public domain, fostering informed debate, exposing injustice and holding power to account.
Yet independent media in Europe is reeling. Traditional business models are broken, and the already fragile economics of online journalism is being further crushed by social media’s shifting algorithms which draw advertising revenues elsewhere. At the same time, political and legal pressures are growing, along with censorship, intimidation, the concentration of ownership in a few hands and political capture. These challenges are compounded by artificial intelligence’s rapid rise.
It’s no exaggeration, therefore, to say that independent media’s future in Europe and our information landscape is uncertain – just when the need for accurate, independent, fact-based journalism could hardly be greater.
What can be done?
Time for philanthropy to step up
Beyond the Headlines carefully assesses the scale and nature of the problem, and makes a compelling case for why philanthropic funders are uniquely positioned to step into the breach, and provide the long-term, financial and moral support that’s crucial to strengthen media business models, produce high-quality journalism accessible to a wider audience, and protect independent reporters in the face of mounting pressures.
Civitates’ dedicated media subfund’s success in supporting independent public interest media in Europe shows what philanthropic funding can achieve. In the five years since the fund was founded, we have absorbed important lessons and gained valuable experience working with independent media.
The subfund has supported 24 independent media organisations in 14 countries, to a total of 5,8 million EUR – thanks to 27 foundations pooling their funding and knowledge. In that time, our grantee partners have exposed corruption, human rights abuses, and published a vast array of public interest stories which would otherwise have remained buried, many leading to concrete social and policy changes.
Beyond providing the time and resources necessary for original, groundbreaking reporting, the subfund has enabled our media grantee partners to innovate storytelling methods (crucial in the age of the so-called ‘attention economy’); establish vital reserves; build bigger, stronger teams; promote their content across multiple channels to reach new audiences; and invest in organisational development. The results speak for themselves.
But the support that Civitates has provided is nowhere near enough.
In an ideal world, independent media would be financially self-sustainable. However, in the current economic and political climate – with autocracies and media capture on the rise – this is just not feasible. New ways of financing independent journalism are evolving, but most are in their infancy. In the meantime, more philanthropic funding is desperately needed to fill the void.
To help meet these challenges, Civitates needs to at least triple our budget, so we can support more independent media outlets, in more countries, trialling innovative ways to do journalism in the 21st century.
Our approach is multi-faceted. It includes supporting outlets to adapt to the fast changing digital media landscape; supporting them to shape effective audience engagement strategies; to build financial resilience; protecting journalists from legal, political and physical threats; and offering them training in everything from revenue diversification to editorial independence and governance.
We focus on outlets in countries with shrinking civic space or rising media capture, prioritising diversity in languages, audiences and geography.
Philanthropic funders can have greater impact through collaboration and can offer the long-term unrestricted funding – free of editorial control – that is crucial to create the stability, time and space for independent media to strengthen their business models, while they keep producing high-quality journalism and take care of their staff’s security and wellbeing.
Civitates is the pooled fund to help foundations sustain and support an ecosystem of resilient independent media in Europe.
By supporting groundbreaking, revelatory and innovative journalism, philanthropy can protect democracy itself. Join us in bolstering independent media across Europe.
