What is Giving Compass?
We connect donors to learning resources and ways to support community-led solutions. Learn more about us.
Giving Compass' Take:
• Sameer Padania breaks down the media and journalism landscape for funders who want to begin to make an impact on this field in Europe.
• How does cultural context vary between European countries? What is the importance of media and journalism in Europe for the world?
• Learn about the value of local journalism.
Donors working around the world are concerned about the threat posed by closing space, including intensified threats against freedom of expression and information, and media freedom. This compounds the crisis that the field of journalism – a critical pillar of open, democratic societies – is already facing worldwide. Declining revenues, dependence on large technology providers, and global-scale information pollution threaten journalism’s economic, technical and organizational independence, and weaken its democratic role and functions. This damages, in turn, the ability of civil society to scrutinize and hold power to account, at all levels.
At the same time, the technical and financial barriers to entry into the journalism field have never been lower, and the opportunities to innovate and have impact with journalism have in many ways never been greater. New public-interest journalistic endeavors are launching in even the most constrained places around the world. Non-traditional donors like Google have created their own initiatives to stimulate greater innovation and transformation in the industry. Against this backdrop, the journalism field is increasingly turning to philanthropy for support, including to human rights, social change, and transparency donors.
Current journalism donors are actively seeking to diversify the number and range of funders supporting the journalism and media field. This resource aims to help Ariadne members to boost their understanding of the key issues, debates, and approaches in funding journalism and media. We hope that this will help prepare funders focused on human rights, social justice or transparency and accountability to engage in the journalism and media field effectively and ethically, with a stronger shared understanding of why, when and how to do so.
As part of this, funders have had to build a better understanding of technology in many varied contexts – what it is, the differences between different technologies, how much it costs. Most foundations still do not have natural expertise in this area, either on staff or at board level, and this skills gap can affect decision-making adversely. Funders also need to be cognizant of the reality that adversaries of their work will pay for and use high-level tech expertise – and that even in places where these concerns seem remote, governments and other authorities are increasingly turning to technology to surveil and control information environments, limit and track speech, and further clip the work and freedom of media and civil society. People’s lives will increasingly be shaped by technologies, even if they themselves don’t have access to it.