Preamble
An adapted text of the introduction to the OECD Development Co-operation Principles for Relevant and Effective Support to Media and the Information Environment with additional sub headings.
Introduction
Democracy depends on a well-informed public.
Freedom of expression, media independence, and access to information are the cornerstones of democracy and democratic governance.
Access to information and freedom of expression are fundamental in ensuring the ability of citizens to receive accurate and unbiased information.
Further, it is indispensable for meaningful citizen participation in the conduct of public affairs, building fair and just societies, and pursuing meaningful and sustainable development and peace.
This ability, in turn, requires journalists who can safely produce quality content irrespective of their gender, nationality, ethnicity, race, language, religion, or any other status; media outlets that can operate with sufficient resources and without undue interference; and information ecosystems* predicated upon human rights-respecting frameworks, gender equality and the ethical use of technology.
Sustainable development & democracy
A well-functioning independent media system is critical to sustainable development, and a bulwark of peaceful, economically prosperous societies. Greater citizen engagement (Larizza, 2017[1]), higher levels of transparency, stronger accountability (Reinikka R., 2005[2]; Groves D. W., 2022[3]), lower corruption (Freille S., 2007[4]; Brunetti and Weder, 2003[5]) and more social cohesion (Breuer, 2024[6]) are all attributable to the presence of professional news media.
A vibrant news sector is also fundamental as the first line of defence against democratic backsliding and autocratisation, whose first step is often to undermine media freedom and financial viability (CIMA, 2021[7]).
Credible news media shed sunlight on critical social, economic and political issues to ensure a well-informed civil society and accountability of industry and private interests.
International norms
International norms have long recognised the importance of freedom of expression and of the media, including in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, especially:
Various other instruments at the global and regional levels, including target 16.10 of the Sustainable Development Goals.
OECD guidance
In 2014, the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) issued a series of guidelines on Accountability and Democratic Governance: Orientations and Principles for Development.
Targeting the development assistance community, the guidelines aimed to inspire “new approaches to risk taking, analysis and programming around systems of accountability and ‘do no harm’ efforts in political engagement.”
In addition to areas such as elections, political parties, and parliaments, the guidelines included a dedicated chapter on media assistance that acknowledged the central and powerful role of the media*and advocated a number of strategic principles for incorporating media assistance into the larger framework of development assistance.
Digital disruption
The rise of new technologies, including social media, has had far reaching consequences on information ecosystems.
The current global information environment is increasingly characterised by a structural shift towards digital and mobile platforms dominated by user-generated content (including automated content generators) (Newman N., 2023[9]) which has had positive consequences for vibrant public debate, but which has also facilitated a significant rise in mis- and disinformation and hate speech.
This technological shift also resulted in a clear generational gap and other digital divides with young people predominantly using digital platforms to communicate and access information, including news.
The new information environment has also led to a collapse of the traditional business model for media and journalism.
This steep decline in economic viability of traditional journalism is accompanied by an even steeper increase in informational and user generated content which overshadows, undermines and contradicts verified reporting and content in the public interest.
An urgent call to action
The complex and interrelated nature of these challenges require a fresh and sophisticated approach to development assistance.
There is a need for more and better support to media and journalism, contextualised within a larger information ecosystem.
The 2014 principles viewed media assistance as support for “editorial independence, financial sustainability, professional capacity, and a lively civil society.”
Ten years later, the urgency of needs calls for a renewed and increased commitment to assistance that represents a more strategic response to current challenges, takes a more holistic, systemic approach to public interest media (IFPIM, 2021[10])*, and balances growing tensions between addressing mis- and disinformation and respecting freedom of expression and opinion-building – all within the context of evolving information technologies, including artificial intelligence.
Effective support to media and the information environment
This document puts forward principles which set out what relevant and effective support to media and the information environment might look like.
The target audience for these principles is primarily development actors within the DAC, whose 32 members include many of the world’s largest providers of official development assistance (ODA).
In addition, it addresses media support practitioners and organisations, local media outlets, national governments, parliaments, political parties, international policy makers, private foundations and investors, and other stakeholders engaged in the future of media and media support.
The principles derive from and respond to consultations conducted by the Global Forum for Media Development (GFMD) and the Center for International Media Assistance (CIMA), which between December 2021 and June 2022 gathered input from representatives from bilateral donor agencies, implementing organisations, civil society groups, and media development experts via nearly 200 in-person and online discussions.*
In November 2022, the DAC Network on Governance agreed to develop new principles, recognising a need to ensure that the international response to the crisis in the media sector fits better in a rapidly changing information environment.
That same month, the intergovernmental Council of UNESCO’s International Program for the Development of Communication (IPDC) also welcomed the process for developing such principles (UNESCO, 2022[11]).
This document captures that intent.
Why is official development assistance (ODA) to public interest media and information integrity important for development actors?
The Development Assistance Committee (DAC) defines official development assistance (ODA) as “government aid that promotes and specifically targets the economic development and welfare of developing countries” (OECD, 2024[12])
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” (OECD, 2024[12]).
OECD Commitments
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, 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 (OECD, 2021[13]) .
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” (OECD, 2021[13]).
Reinforcing democracy
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 (OECD, 2022[14]).
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 (OECD, 2022[14]), 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, social cohesion, the defence of human rights, and the rights of minorities and vulnerable groups.
A commitment to addressing mis/disinformation while protecting freedom of speech.
Erosion of trust
Indeed, the erosion of trust in media has emerged as one of the leading concerns facing the information ecosystem, notably through the increased weaponization of mis- and disinformation, a perceived media contiguity with discredited elites, as well as a perceived lack of independence or professionalism.
The 2023 Edelman Trust Barometer shows that two out of every five respondents (42%) views 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%) (Edelman, 2023[15]).
Risks journalists, journalism & information integrity
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 percent of the world’s population experienced a decline in press freedom in their country (UNESCO, 2022[16]).
From 2019 to the end of 2023, UNESCO recorded the killings of 433 journalists, who died in circumstances related to their work (UNESCO, 2024[17]).
At the same time, 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” (V-Dem Institute, 2023[8]).
According to Reporters without borders (RSF) World Press Freedom Index 2023, the situation is “good” or “satisfactory” in only 52 out of 180 countries (RSF, 2024[18]).
Self-censorship & gender-based violence
Self-censorship is increasing because of more hostile media and information environments, particularly affecting women.
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).
In a global survey carried out by UNESCO and the International Centre for Journalists (ICFJ), as part of a research project titled The Chilling, more than a third of female journalists reported making themselves less visible as a result of the attacks and intimidation they endure – for example by asking to be taken off air, writing behind a pseudonym or self-censoring on social media.
Nearly three quarters of women journalists surveyed reported facing online violence or harassment. Moreover, the potential impacts of Generative AI on GBV have been highlighted by UNESCO (UNESCO, 2023[19]).
Women face additional challenges including discrimination in the newsrooms, a lack of women as sources, stereotyping of women and dismissal of women’s issues as soft stories.
Media viability
Moreover, traditional business models and the financial viability of the media sector face serious challenges (Economist Impact, 2022[20]).
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-year period ending in 2019 (UNESCO, 2022[16]).
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 (Economist Impact, 2022[20]).
In some cases low or no-fee information services are provided by state-controlled media, which may out compete other 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 (Gabbatt, 2020[21]).
In recent years, various 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 RSF, which has led to: 1) the endorsement by 43 countries of the International Partnership on Information and Democracy, defining principles of the global communication and information space and 2) 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, which 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. MFC members initiated and continue to support the Global Media Defence Fund, administered by UNESCO; this fund complements existing UNESCO funding mechanisms such as the International Programme for the Development of Communication and the Multi-Donor Programme on Freedom of Expression and Safety of Journalists.
The International Fund for Public Interest Media (IFPIM), established in 2021as a multistakeholder 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 Global Forum for Media Development (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, 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 eighty countries are engaged in the JTI process.
The 193 Member States of UNESCO in November 2021 endorsed the principles of the Windhoek+30 Declaration: Information as a Public Good, which reaffirms the value of free, pluralistic, and independent media, and calls attention to the urgent importance of securing economic viability for news, transparency of internet companies, and increasing media and information competencies amongst the public.
As part of the Summit for Democracy’s Media Freedom Cohort, several organisations and states committed to work 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 (FCDO), GFMD, and CIMA. This is in line with the DAC Network on Governance commitment in its Programme of Work and Budget 2023-2024.
Harnessing growing opportunities for co-ordinated action afforded by the above mentioned 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 2030 Agenda 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?
Development Assistance Committee (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-affected 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 to the sector stagnated at a tiny fraction of official development assistance (ODA).*
The DAC Network on Governance’s mapping of ODA support to media and the broader information environment shows that for the period 2016 to 2022 the total ODA (per year) allocated to media and the information environment (including funding for information and communication technology and broadband infrastructure) is on average only 0.5% of the total ODA.
When ODA for infrastructure-related purposes is excluded, this number shrinks to 0.24%. Furthermore, the analysis shows that only up to 8% of ODA allocated for the media and information environment directly supports media organisations in partner countries (that is 8% of the 0.5%!).
In addition, only a small number of development co-operation providers are supporting this sector.
Between 2010 and 2019, 68% of the total ODA for media and information system development – excluding spending on international public broadcast corporations– was provided by six DAC members: United States (21%), Germany (17%), Sweden (10%), Japan (7%), France (7%) and the United Kingdom (6%) (CIMA, 2022[22]). In short, only a few development co-operation providers provide the bulk of media support, a relatively small part is country allocable, and a significant proportion goes to public service broadcasters, leaving only a fraction of the total that reaches media outlets in partner countries.
Overall, this is a markedly modest ODA contribution for a sector that plays such a catalytic function in enabling democratic governance, economic development, and fulfilling human rights. The current level of support is insufficient to address the challenges above and 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 (lack of robust impact measurement) (Arsenault A., 2010[23]; Nelson and Susman-Peña, 2012[24]; Odugbemi S., 2010[25]).
Improving support to the media sector
Development co-operation provider support to the media sector can be more effective.
Short-term goals and donor-driven interventions, along with the instrumentalization of media are frequently observed.
While use of the media to achieve wider development goals can have value, these initiatives do not necessarily help media to build the resilience they need to address the major challenges they face (GFMD, 2023[26]).
Also, development co-operation provider co-ordination could be improved, including greater coherence among overlapping or competing mandates between foreign policy and development institutions.
Despite these challenges, there has been a clear growth of engagement on media development issues through intergovernmental platforms (e.g., MFC and UNESCO’s IPDC) and multistakeholder platforms (e.g., International Institute for Information Design).
A maturing media development community
A community of media development and journalism support organisations have 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, learning, innovation and harnessing of data to improve the relevance and effectiveness of aid has followed, along with innovations and improvements.
Media development donors have helped to refine diagnostic tools, promote co-creation of country-level agendas, develop local multistakeholder networks, and incentivise co-ordination 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.
Democractisation and media support
More recent assessments on democracy support find that targeted support to free media has been more likely to have a positive effect on democratisation than other forms of development assistance (Gisselquist R., 2021[27]; Nino-Zarazua M., 2020[28]).
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 (Casey, 2015[29]) and Mozambique (Gracio, 2021[30]) and increase government responsiveness to citizen needs (for example in India (Besley, 2002[31]).
Media coverage of politics also has a positive impact by amplifying other information interventions such as televising election debates (in Sierra Leone (Bidwell, 2018[32]) and Uganda (Platas, 2019[33]), publicising citizens’ scorecards (for example in India (Banerjee, 2011[34]) and disseminating findings from government audits in Brazil (Ferraz, 2008[35]) and Mexico (Larreguy, 2020[36]).
Investigative journalism
The work of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists 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 multiple 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 hold powerful individuals to account, spur criminal investigations, drive legislative reforms, recover billions of dollars in taxes and penalties, and promote economic development. Actions taken by governments recovered USD 1.4 billion in taxes and penalties in the five years after the Panama Papers were first published.
ODA support to media remains small
Although support to the media constitutes a small proportion of total ODA, some development cooperation providers are prioritising this area, and are considering how to make their support more effective.
Media development co-operation providers such as the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) and the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida) 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 (SDC, 2020[37]).
The DAC Network on Governance has taken numerous actions, 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 DAC Network on Governance Programme of Work and Budget 2023-2024*; and webinars and meetings on issues such as mis/disinformation and media viability.
These events were met by calls for the DAC Network on Governance 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 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 growing understanding of aid and development effectiveness and the impact of assistance.
References
For the references used in the Introduction please see pages 14-18 of the Development Co-operation Principles for Relevant and Effective Support to Media and the Information Environment.
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