Press Freedom Under Threat
Learn three ways USAID is ensuring free and independent media
In 2023, the movie Barbie broke a lot of records, including highest grossing movie of the year and biggest opening by a female director. It also broke a fictional record, where Journalist Barbie won both a Pulitzer and a Nobel Prize for Journalism. The Nobel Prize for Journalism does not exist outside of Barbie Land for now, although eight journalists have won a Nobel Peace Prize in the history of the award.
Whether in Barbie Land or the Real World, a freely operating, truth-seeking press is a core pillar of a healthy democracy, and Kendoms and authoritarian governments know that. They well understand that journalists working in the public interest provide a crucial check on the actions of the executive, legislative, and judicial branches, help to educate and inform citizens, stem corruption, and hold powerful actors and institutions accountable for their actions.
That’s why when repressive forces seek to gain or retain power, constraining independent media is too often at the top of their strategy — as we see before us now.
Violence, harassment, repression, and censorship against journalists is at record highs, with the Committee to Protect Journalists recording the highest (2022) and second-highest (2023) numbers of journalists imprisoned since it started tracking this figure 30 years ago. Last year also saw a high number of deaths of journalists covering the Ukraine and Gaza wars, and a sharp rise in killings in Latin America where reporting on organized crime, corruption, and the environment poses significant risks.
Responding to The Threat
When authoritarian and other repressive actors seek to silence expression, they do so to divide citizens, undermine their faith and trust in institutions, and make them question whether democracy can deliver for them.
Whether traditional techniques — attacking journalists, jailing editors, or putting censorship statutes on the books — or new takes like poisoning the information space or shutting down the internet, the intent is to silence dissent, or even just create uncertainty or cynicism.
As worst practices are shared, we see corruption weaponized, truthful narratives purposely distorted, and technologies put to work against reporters in Sudan, Myanmar, Belarus, Kyrgyzstan, and so many other places. Accelerating this trend was the COVID-19 pandemic, when uncertainty and global economic disruption opened the path for increased democratic erosion and closing civic space, putting even more pressure on independent media.
Supporting independent media has been part of USAID’s democracy and governance assistance efforts since the 1980s. The U.S. government is now the largest public donor to independent media development globally.
Based on decades of evolving research, testing, and learning, USAID has expanded its understanding of the multiple intersecting threats media practitioners face — legal, physical, economic, and digital — and how necessary it is to work from many sides to build and reinforce media sectors that are as resilient as possible against the forces that would seek to shut them down.
New Initiatives to Advance Free and Independent Media
A major demonstration of this approach comes through USAID’s Summit for Democracy commitments, a series of initiatives to address these threats and advance free and independent media.
The first one is the Media Viability Accelerator (MVA), which was announced at the first Summit for Democracy in December 2021. The goal of the MVA is to preserve fact-based news and information media by providing access to the data they need to build strategies to survive, thrive, adapt, and grow as businesses. Through a public-private partnership with USAID, Microsoft, and Internews, MVA is a unique data platform using artificial intelligence and other digital tools to enable media outlets to better understand markets, audiences, and strategies that will maximize their odds of profitability.
Second, USAID’s $20 million contribution to the International Fund for Public Interest Media (IFPIM) is helping to boost global support through grants to develop and sustain a wide range of independent news organizations. To date, IFPIM has committed nearly $9 million through 32 grants across 16 countries to media outlets in urgent need of financial assistance and to strengthen their long-term sustainability. USAID’s initial seed funding has leveraged an additional $30 million from 15 governments, philanthropies, and corporate entities.
The third initiative is Reporters Shield, an innovative program that helps protect investigative media outlets and civil society organizations from strategic litigation against public participation lawsuits, or other legal threats meant to silence their reporting. Prior to the launch of Reporters Shield, such help was inconsistent, ad hoc, reactive, and, often, expensive.
USAID Administrator Samantha Power launched the next phase of USAID’s Reporters Shield, at the United Nations Headquarters last World Press Freedom Day on May 3. Reporters Shield is now providing legal support services and capacity development for 12 media outlets and civil society organizations doing investigative reporting, with more than 100 applications still under review during the launch phase alone. Additional phases will be opening in spring and summer.
Ensuring Trustworthy Information
Although these three innovations directly benefit journalists and media organizations, they are ultimately meant to ensure that all of us have sources of trustworthy information.
They also complement other USAID programs that equip journalists and their allies to protect themselves from attacks online and offline, strengthen investigative journalism networks, advance freedom of expression, and amplify citizen voices and government response.
At the third Summit for Democracy from March 2024, and hosted by South Korea, USAID will share progress on these initiatives that underline its commitment to supporting journalists and their allies to build robust, resilient media sectors — and look ahead with like-minded governments and development agencies to the ongoing challenge of protecting the fundamental freedom of information access against an ever evolving set of threats.
Reporters have enough work to do with serving as watchdogs and, at times, bulldogs. To paraphrase Dua Lipa in Barbie, they can take the heat, baby, best believe that’s the moment they shine. In doing so, however, as Administrator Power noted in her World Press Freedom Day speech in May 2023, journalists shouldn’t have to deal with bankruptcy, bailiffs, or bullets.
About the Author
Shannon Maguire is the Senior Media Advisor in USAID’s Bureau for Europe and Eurasia’s Technical Support Office in the Democracy and Governance Division.
