Written evidence submission: Global Forum for Media Development (GFMD)
The strategic rationale for prioritising journalism and media support funding in the UK’s Official Development Assistance (ODA) in the coming years is strongly supported by the following:
● Supporting journalism is vital in the face of emerging threats such as disinformation and misuse of AI, which risk widening the epistemic gap, deepening inequalities, and fuelling political polarisation, tensions, and even violence within societies.
● Journalism is at risk of being marginalised in the accelerated weaponisation of information, fuelled by powerful actors and amplified by dominant online platforms, leaving societies increasingly vulnerable to malicious influence and interference campaigns.
Public interest journalism delivers significant democratic and financial returns. It exposes corruption, financial crime, and misuse of public funds, leading to concrete recoveries and policy reforms. As a recent statement from 11 leading economists — including Nobel laureates Joseph Stiglitz and Daron Acemoğlu — demonstrates, the economic benefits of supporting journalism are measurable and substantial.
The Panama Papers investigation, for example, led to the recovery of over USD 1.2 billion globally by 2019, including approximately USD 252 million recovered in the UK through lawsuits and back taxes. Beyond these recoveries, public interest journalism contributes to the wider media ecosystem and economy: around 1.1 million people work in and around publishing, generating roughly 1% of the EU’s GDP. Similarly, around 300,000 people work in and around media and publishing in the UK, a sector with a £25.4 billion turnover, £302.6 million in recent investment, and annual growth of around 2.4%.
Across developing economies, around 0.9% of the workforce in low-income countries and about 1.1% in middle-income countries are employed in media- and publishing-related activities.
As the OECD’s Principles for Relevant and Effective Support to Media and the Information Environment highlight, flexible, long-term, and locally grounded support is essential to sustain pluralism and trust in information systems.
UK ODA should be deployed in ways that prioritise local decision-making and ownership in the design and delivery of journalism support and media development programmes. Empowering local delivery ensures that interventions are context-appropriate, sustainable, and trusted by the communities they serve.
In accordance with the Toolkit developed by GFMD, and in line with the Principle 4 (Strengthen local ownership) key challenges in empowering local partners include:
● Small budgets limit the capacity to support local media effectively.
● Limited staff reduces the ability to maintain consistent engagement.
● Complex political environments further restrict meaningful collaboration with local media.
Opportunities for moving from paternalistic models include:
● Budgeting for consultation and coordination time so that local partners can participate in agenda-setting.
● Establishing standing advisory groups of local journalists and media actors to guide programme design.
● Facilitating regional partnerships and co-funding mechanisms that enable domestic ownership and long-term planning.
● Using flexible sub-granting schemes or trust funds to reach smaller, independent outlets in fragile or repressive environments.
Support for media and information integrity sits at the intersection of economic growth, national security, and democratic resilience. In an era of systemic disinformation, democratic backsliding, and rising authoritarianism, journalism must be treated not as a commercial commodity or a charitable cause, but as an essential public good — safeguarding the quality and security of our information ecosystem.
In many countries, journalists face harassment, intimidation, and physical attacks for simply doing their jobs. The sector has also been under severe financial strain for years, threatening the continuity and sustainability of essential work.
A comprehensive shift is required: from fragmented, short-term, project-based grants to more strategic, long-term investment. This includes developing diversified funding portfolios that blend public, philanthropic, and private sources, alongside dedicated mechanisms capable of offering sustained and flexible financial support for journalism in the public interest.
Journalism, development and humanitarian contexts
Independent journalism plays a vital role not only in democratic governance but also in development and humanitarian contexts. As highlighted in Journalism for Development (Stiglitz, Schiffrin, and Groves, 2024), journalism is fundamental to building democratic societies, driving economic development, and ensuring public accountability.
Humanitarian actors such as the ICRC and UNHCR have developed toolkits to combat harmful information and often rely on local media to reach affected populations and communicate their missions effectively.
FCDO resources to support public interest journalism and media
As with many other aid organisations, the FCDO does not have the capacity to achieve maximum impact on its own. However, its active engagement in initiatives such as the adoption of the Development Cooperation Principles on Relevant and Effective Support to Media and the Information Environment and participation in intergovernmental bodies like the Media Freedom Coalition (MFC) demonstrates a strong commitment to coordination. Through these collaborative platforms, the FCDO can leverage collective expertise and align efforts across partners to achieve better results with limited resources. This coordination can also extend beyond media development to connect relief and broader development efforts across sectors, enhancing coherence and impact.
In this context, GFMD can provide a valuable advisory role by offering evidence from the field, summarising lessons, and delivering neutral, trusted overviews to support FCDO and other UK aid departments in planning, monitoring, and adapting interventions for greater impact.
To communicate the results of UK aid and ensure accountability — in line with Principle 6: Invest in knowledge, research, and learning — the government should prioritise coordination and shared learning. Fragmented research and evaluation systems waste insight; coordination turns scattered data into shared intelligence.
Embedding learning across departments and levels of government strengthens accountability, coherence, and adaptation. Knowledge must flow both ways — from institutions to journalists and back — ensuring that evidence drives practice, not paperwork.
Organisations such as GFMD’s International Media Policy and Advisory Centre can provide evidence from the field, summarise lessons, and deliver trusted, neutral overviews to support UK institutions where resources are limited. Data and bespoke services from journalism support and membership organisations can enhance the impact and efficiency of UK aid departments.
Knowledge and evidence collection are strengthened by the robust academic journalism and media research community, which produces valuable research and insights — such as the recently launched Index on International Media Freedom Support (IMFS), prepared by an independent research group as a joint project between City, University of London (St George’s), and the University of East Anglia.
UK-based NGOs (including GFMD members based in the UK, mentioned below) demonstrate strong interest and capacity in sharing expertise to support media development and public-interest journalism in both development and humanitarian contexts. Many of these organisations are motivated by missions to promote independent media, strengthen local capacity, uphold human rights, and improve access to trustworthy information. Their values emphasise collaboration, knowledge exchange, and sustainable impact, making them well-positioned to deploy expertise in partnership with local actors. By leveraging these organisations’ professional networks, technical skills, and experience, UK ODA can channel expertise effectively to support context-appropriate interventions, enhance local decision-making, and strengthen resilience in media systems globally.
In supporting media, the UK should engage philanthropic sources, private investment, and Development Finance Institutions to develop blended finance instruments that catalyse private capital, while enforcing strict editorial safeguards to prevent shareholders from interfering with editorial independence.
The UK should also support the development of public digital infrastructure for the journalism and media ecosystem — a shared, open, and ethical platform for content storage, verification, and distribution.
In line with the Sevilla Commitment, the UK Government should ensure that independent and investigative journalism continues to play a crucial role in monitoring the effectiveness of spending and ensuring accountability in the use of funds. This includes supporting third-party civil society oversight mechanisms, such as investigative outlets and networks, to monitor UK-funded projects and financial instruments. These measures will reinforce transparency, improve aid outcomes, and strengthen citizens’ trust in UK development efforts.
This evidence is submitted by the Global Forum for Media Development (GFMD) — the largest global community for media development, media freedom, and journalism support. Through collaboration, coordination, and collective action, our network of 215 member organisations — and dozens of partners — designs and delivers policies and programmes to sustain journalism as a public good.
GFMD has collaborated with the FCDO, most notably contributing to the adoption of the Development Cooperation Principles on Relevant and Effective Support to Media and the Information Environment in March 2024. This outcome followed more than two years of consultation and advocacy led by GFMD and the Centre for International Media Assistance (CIMA), in partnership with bilateral donors including the UK and intergovernmental bodies such as the Media Freedom Coalition.
UK-based international NGOs are among GFMD’s most active members, including ARTICLE 19, BBC Media Action, The Guardian Foundation, Media Diversity Institute (MDI), Public Media Alliance, Rory Peck Trust, The Centre for Investigative Journalism, Thomson Foundation, Thomson Reuters Foundation, and others.