Why is official development assistance (ODA) to public interest media and information integrity important for development actors?

The DAC defines official development assistance (ODA) as “government aid that promotes and specifically targets the economic development and welfare of developing countries.” Understanding of this definition has changed over time, recognising, for example, the emergence of “non-DAC providers or philanthropic foundations, the diversification of financial instruments for development, or the increasing overlap of development cooperation policy objectives with those of other sectors such as migration and security.” In 2021, on the occasion of its 60th anniversary, the OECD released its vision for the next decade, in which OECD members reaffirmed not only their commitment to democracy, the rule of law, and human rights, but also acknowledged a dramatically changing world, including global financial crises, the COVID-19 pandemic, the challenges of climate change, and rising inequality and vulnerability.

This renewed commitment also recognised the key role of information ecosystems, with OECD members pledging to “support open societies in the digital and data-driven age.” This includes the intention to “advance responses to the challenges of digitalisation, including the necessity to develop new skills, the evolution of the traditional model of work and modes of business, the need to update competition policy, the need to guard against threats to democracy, digital security and privacy and to combat disinformation online.”

In 2022, at the Global Forum and Ministerial Meeting on Building Trust and Reinforcing Democracy, the OECD launched the Reinforcing Democracy Initiative, which aims to provide evidence-based guidance and good international practices to help countries reinforce democratic values and institutions. Among the initiative’s five pillars are combating mis- and disinformation and transforming public governance for digital democracy. In addition, the OECD adopted the Declaration on Building Trust and Reinforcing Democracy, which, among other statements, includes:

• the recognition that “free, pluralistic and resilient media and information ecosystems are critical for democracies”

• an acknowledgement of the risks posed by destabilised information ecosystems on the values of democracy, the defence of human rights, and the rights of minorities and vulnerable groups

• a commitment to addressing mis/disinformation while protecting freedom of speech.

Indeed, the erosion of trust has emerged as one of the leading concerns facing the information ecosystem, notably through the increased weaponization of fake news or false information. The 2023 Edelman Trust Barometer shows that two out of every five respondents (42%) view journalists as a divisive force in society. While no major source is universally trusted for general news and information, trust in traditional media remains significantly higher (at 59%) than trust in social media (at only 41%).

Public interest media and information integrity, however, are increasingly at risk. UNESCO’s 2022 World Trends Report on journalism as a public good found that over the past five years, approximately 85 per cent of the world’s population experienced a decline in press freedom in their country. From 2016 to the end of 2021, UNESCO recorded the killings of 455 jornalists, who either died for their work or while on the job. At the same time, the imprisonment of journalists has reached record highs. Similarly, in 2022 the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) Institute observed a record 35 countries suffering significant deteriorations in freedom of expression at the hands of governments – up from only five countries 10 years ago. V-Dem also found that harassment and censorship of the media worsened in 21 of the 33 countries considered “autocratising”. According to RSF’s World Press Freedom Index 2023, the situation is “good” or “satisfactory” in only 52 out of 180 countries. In other words, the environment for journalism is “bad” in seven out of ten countries.

Moreover, a big part of the problem is that traditional business models and the financial viability of the media sector face serious challenges. Advertising revenues have shifted massively from traditional media to social media platforms, and circulation and sales of print media are in sharp decline. With readership and advertising markets moving online, advertising revenue for newspapers plummeted by nearly half in the ten years ending in 2019.15 In low- and middle-income countries in particular, media outlets operate in an unstable business and political environment and with limited access to investment capital, philanthropy, and government support. Even in countries with long traditions of safeguarding free and independent journalism, financial and technological transformations have forced news outlets, especially those serving local communities, to close. In some cases, low or no-fee news wire services are provided by state-controlled media out competing public interest news providers. The COVID-19 pandemic and its global economic impact exacerbated these trends, which now threaten to create an “extinction-level” event for independent journalism outlets.

Gender-based violence (GBV), both digital and physical, constitutes an attack on democracy itself as it leads to self-censorship (women retreating from the public sphere because of harassment). More than a third of female journalists avoided reporting certain stories because of the threats, intimidation or attacks they endure. Almost half of female journalists experience online abuse, according to International Media Support (IMS)

In recent years, numerous initiatives have emerged in an effort to respond to this grave crisis. These include:

• The International Initiative on Information and Democracy, driven by member states along with Reporters without Borders, has led to: ) the endorsement by 43 countries of the International Partnership on Information and Democracy, defining principles of the global communication and information space and ) the creation of the Forum on Information and Democracy to expand these principles and issue concrete recommendations for regulation and self-regulation.

• The Media Freedom Coalition (MFC), established in 2019 as a partnership of now more than 50 countries, advocates for media freedom, including the safety of journalists and media workers, through a combination of advocacy efforts, diplomatic interventions, support for legal reforms, international events, and funding for media freedom initiatives. The MFC has a Working Group dedicated to Media Development.

• The Media Freedom Cohort, launched in 2021 as part of the first Summit for Democracy and co-chaired by the Netherlands Canada and Internews, aimed to protect journalist safety and security, advance freedom of expression, and bolster independent and diverse media. (Following the 2023 Summit, the Cohort now continues as part of the MFC.)

• The International Fund for Public Interest Media (IFPIM), was established in 2021 as a multi-stakeholder initiative designed to diagnose and address the challenges facing public interest media in low- and middle-income countries and help to identify pathways toward long-term sustainability.

• The International Media Policy and Advisory Centre (IMPACT), established by GFMD, aims to provide donors, funders, policy-makers, and practitioners with the necessary groundwork needed to make informed, evidence-based decisions about media development and journalism support strategies, programming, funding, and advocacy.

• The Journalism Trust Initiative (JTI) launched in 2018 by RSF (Reporters without Borders), is an international standard, a label for showcasing and promoting trustworthy journalism. The JTI aims at a healthier information space by developing and implementing indicators for trustworthiness of journalism and thus, promotes and rewards compliance with professional norms and ethics. To date, more than 850 media organisations from 80 countries are engaged in the JTI process.

As part of the Summit for Democracy’s Media Freedom Cohort, several organisations and states committed to working with the DAC Network on Governance to update the existing media assistance principles so they better respond to the current context, and include a more operational focus. Organisations and states which made this commitment included the Media Freedom Coalition’s Media Development Working Group, the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA), the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), the United Kingdom’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, GFMD, and CIMA. This is in line with a GovNet commitment in its programme of work 2023-2024.

Harnessing growing opportunities for coordinated action afforded by the abovementioned initiatives, the below draft principles draw from the original 2014 principles (accessible in Accountability and Democratic Governance: Orientations and Principles for Development) as well as international policy documents, such as the Windhoek+30 Declaration, the Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development, the Paris Agreement, the 2021 DAC Recommendation on Enabling Civil Society in Development Cooperation and Humanitarian Assistance; and a growing body of evidence and research emerging from practice-based learning and evaluation and scholarly enquiry into media development.

What have we learned from ODA efforts to improve the information environment?

DAC members have supported the development of independent media since World War II. That assistance became more systematic and structured in the 1990s, after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union, when such support was critical to the transitions of previously one-party state-controlled media systems. In subsequent years, media development programs spread throughout Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East, responding to a diversity of contexts – from fragile and conflict-afflicted states to transitional countries taking steps to reform, to more advanced middle-income economies where the media holds promise for growth and investment.

Despite decades of research on the vital role of public interest media and healthy information ecosystems for development, international support for the sector stagnated at a tiny fraction of ODA, just 0.3 per cent.20 This level of support is not sufficient to address the challenges reviewed above. In addition, only a small number of donors are supporting this sector. Between 2010 and 2019, 68% of the total ODA for media and information system development – excluding spending on international broadcasting such as Deutsche Welle and BBC World Service – was provided by six DAC members: United States (21%), Germany (17%), Sweden (10%), Japan (7%), France (7%) and the United Kingdom (6%).21 In short, only a few donors provide the bulk of media support, a relatively small part is country-allocable, and an increasing segment goes to public corporations, leaving only a fraction of the 0.3% that reaches media outlets in partner countries.

Media sector support as a percentage of total governance support was 0.3% in 2021, a markedly modest ODA contribution for a sector that plays such a catalytic function in enabling accountability and democratic governance and fulfilling human rights. It also signals that support for public interest media and information integrity has not yet emerged as a clear priority for DAC members. Coupled with this comparatively low level of funding has been a scepticism towards media assistance and the challenges involved with demonstrating impact.23

Another part of the problem has been that donor support to the media sector is not as effective as it could be. Donor support to the sector includes generic short courses on journalism, and the use of the media to achieve broader development goals such as changing gender stereotypes, raising awareness of climate change and so on. While the latter are worthy goals in their own right, they do not help the media build the resilience they need to address the major challenges they face. There is also a lack of donor coordination and overlapping or competing mandates between foreign policy and development institutions.

Despite these challenges, a community of media development and journalism support organizations has emerged, including the establishment of GFMD in 2005 and CIMA in 2006 – the organisations which have managed the consultations leading up to the development of the below principles. This community represents years of experience in a variety of challenging environments and has continued to hone its knowledge and expertise. An increasing focus on research and learning towards improving the relevance and effectiveness of aid has followed, along with innovations and improvements. Media development donors have helped to refine diagnostic tools, promote the co-creation of country-level agendas, develop local multi-stakeholder networks, and incentivize coordination at the regional and country levels. Some have also experimented with aid modalities, such as loan guarantees to fund small and medium-sized independent media enterprises in emerging markets with riskier political contexts. Cross-border investigative journalism networks and media sustainability incubators are among the numerous new initiatives in the field.

More recent assessments on democracy aid find that targeted support to free media has been more likely to have a positive effect on democratization than other forms of development assistance. This aligns with wider research findings on the critical role of media in democratic systems. Good quality media coverage has been proven to drive democratic engagement (for example in Sierra Leone and Mozambique) and increase government responsiveness to citizen needs (for example in India). Media coverage of politics also has a positive impact by amplifying other information interventions such as televising election debates (in Sierra Leone and Uganda), publicising citizens’ scorecards (for example in India), and disseminating findings from government audits (in Brazil and Mexico).

The work of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), which led the Panama Papers, Paradise Papers, FinCEN Files, and Pandora Papers projects, is another critical example of the value of supporting media interventions. As the biggest cross-border investigations in journalism history, the results have helped trigger investigations and prompted government inquiries and legislative reform in more than 70 countries. In many cases, it has provided the basis for law enforcement to identify and freeze stolen assets, showing both the importance of this work and the veracity of the allegations it brings forward. These revelations have contributed to holding powerful individuals to account, spur criminal investigations, drive legislative reforms, and recover billions of dollars in taxes and penalties. Actions taken by governments recovered $1.4 billion in taxes and penalties in the five years after the Panama Papers were first published.

Although support to the media constitutes a small proportion of total ODA, some donors are prioritising this area, and are considering how to make their support more effective. Major media development donors such as the Swiss Development Cooperation (SDA) and the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency—have revised their media support strategies. An SDC guidance note on media assistance, for example, has reportedly helped the agency improve the quality of media funding.

The DAC/GovNet has taken numerous actions as well, including a 2019 policy dialogue on media development aiming to re-prioritise media in the governance agenda; an overview of governance ODA between 2010 and 2019, which demonstrated limited ODA investments supporting media and information; a specific component under the GovNet’s Programme of Work and Budget 2023-202434; and webinars and meetings on issues such as mis/disinformation and media viability. These events were met by calls for GovNet and the DAC to sharpen its focus on media and information integrity, to provide clearer guidance on how ODA could have a more meaningful impact.

The draft principles below unite these myriad factors: the vital role of media and journalism in development and democracy, the severity of the crises facing public interest media and information integrity, emerging initiatives to improve innovation and coordination, and a growing understanding of aid and development effectiveness and the impact of assistance.