Impact Report 2025: Good journalism needs allies
With the closure of USAID resulting in a 25 percent cut to the world’s media development budget, independent media outlets across the world have become more vulnerable to existential threats ranging from bombings to disinformation. It is vital that the rest of the world steps up to support journalists in these trying times.
With elected regimes and wars destabilising entire regions and creating a new world order, the role of journalism in informing and educating the public is as crucial as ever. Good journalism is needed to combat disinformation, to investigate the powerful, to help people adapt to climate change and to offer solutions to people’s most pressing issues. Yet, it is harder than ever to produce good journalism as independent media outlets face a wide variety of threats: from being bombed in the war to being shut down due to lack of funds, from disinformation and online harassment to being attacked and arrested by authorities for daring to hold power to account.
This year’s IMS Impact Report is focused on how our media partners are continuing to produce good journalism and bring about change, whether it is helping more women join the journalism profession in Afghanistan, making mountainous roads safer in Yemen, delivering life-saving information in Palestine or rooting out corruption in the midst of war in Ukraine.
As our partners work to overcome the setbacks caused by the closure of USAID – and a resultant loss of their funds ranging from 10 percent to 90 percent – IMS is helping pave the way for their long-term viability. We are helping them become less dependent on donor grants and find ways of unlocking new sources of funding; supercharge their prebunking, debunking and factchecking skills as they combat disinformation; and forge new alliances, collaborations and coalitions to learn from each other across countries and continents.
The IMS Impact Report 2025 covers the following topics:
- Disinformation.
- Investigative journalism.
- Accountability journalism.
- Solutions-focused journalism.
- Public interest journalism.
- Humanitarian journalism.
- Media viability.
- War reporting and mental health.
- Gender equality in journalism.
- Environmental journalism.
- Documentary filmmaking.
