Truth itself has come under siege, from authoritarians who weaponise propaganda, to Big Tech’s plundering of journalism’s revenues, to a generation adrift in social-media noise. Yet journalism’s core purpose to inform endures.
In Parts I and II (See LINK) of this series, I explore how truth itself has come under siege, from authoritarians who weaponise propaganda, to Big Tech’s plundering of journalism’s revenues, to a generation adrift in social-media noise. Yet even amid the wreckage, journalism’s core purpose endures: to inform the public, hold power to account, and provide the raw material of democracy.
If societies are to recover trust in facts, they must not merely save journalism but reimagine it. The task ahead is daunting but not impossible.
Every renewal begins with education. Young people will not defend a craft they neither practise nor understand. Media literacy should therefore be woven into every school curriculum, both at primary and secondary level, and not as an optional add-on. Reporting information credibly is a civic necessity.
Students must learn to distinguish verified reporting from propaganda, to ask who funds a platform, and to recognise emotional manipulation in headlines or memes. Journalism, in turn, must leave its ivory tower. Reporters should visit schools, explain how stories are verified, and show that scepticism, when paired with curiosity, is the foundation of good citizenship.
Access also matters. If young audiences will not pay for news, publishers must meet them halfway. Free or heavily subsidised student subscriptions could seed lifelong habits of informed reading. The New York Times recently introduced a shared family subscription (15 Euros a month in Europe) with individual logins regardless of age for up to four members as a means of roping in the younger generation.
Primary school children aboard the 105-year-old wooden ketch WIKI to learn about the Mediterranean through multi-media journalism.
WIKI Centennial Expedition
As high school teachers and college professors can attest, students are not reading enough. Many, as the British Chamber of Commerce has noted, lack broad cultural backgrounds, always useful in both business and life. This, in turn, effects their ability to learn and to communicate intelligently. Even law school professors complain that students do not know how to write properly.
Newspapers should provide teachers with classroom sets of relevant articles; magazines and online outlets should produce youth-friendly explainers that connect global issues to everyday life: climate change, migration, science, digital rights, even sports.
This is not nostalgia for being able to read a print newspaper over breakfast, or Sunday morning in the garden. It is about ensuring that the next generation recognises why reliable information matters, for their own lives and for democracy itself. Without it, civic discourse dissolves into conspiracy and rage.
Youth filmmaker improving her skills at a HelpSaveTheMed.org multimedia workshop
Global Geneva
Reaching young audiences also means speaking their language. The 18-year-olds scrolling through TikTok will not suddenly start reading a broadsheet front page, whether in print or online. But they might pause for a series of video shorts that clearly explain why the Amazon is burning or what an election result means.
Serious journalism can thrive on social platforms if it adapts format without diluting rigour. A YouTube podcast, a well-produced TikTok explainer, or a carousel of verified Instagram images can all serve the same function as a traditional news feature: to inform based on facts but also context, such as historical backgrounds. (See Alexander Girardet article on journalists reaching different audiences)
How does Putin’s KGB experience in East Germany during the 1980s, for example, affect his thinking for having invaded Ukraine? Or why North American Indian cultures engaged in deliberate – and controlled - forest ‘burns’ centuries ago as a means of promoting ecological diversity, thus reducing the risk of catastrophic wildfires?
News organizations urgently need to get real. But so must those who benefit, notably the public. This does not mean selling out on principles. Editorial transparency about sources, corrections, and funding can build credibility even in spaces dominated by entertainment and outrage.
American actor and director George Clooney, who recently brought his film, Good Night, and Good Luck, about journalist Edward R. Murrow and the McCarthy era of the 1950s in the United States to Broadway, maintained several years ago that it is the moral responsibility of the Fourth Estate to keep authoritarianism or abuse of power in check.
“Reporters must not be afraid of being called unpatriotic...because power unchecked and unchallenged has always corrupted in the history of time," Clooney said. "The freedom of the press is what actually brings down totalitarian governments, that’s what Thomas Jefferson talked about was needed for a free country.”
George Clooney in the Broadway production of Good Night, and Good Luck.
Broadway production photograph
No revival of journalism can succeed without confronting the massive and increasingly powerful digital monopolies that have captured both audiences and advertising. Google, Meta and Amazon built fortunes on the unpaid labour of journalists, artists, filmmakers, authors, photographers, cartoonists and others whose content drives engagement.
Some governments are starting to push back. Australia forced platforms, some of which are using their power to manipulate public opinion, to pay news outlets for the use of their content, but this is partially benefitting only larger organizations and not small outlets or individual journalists. Canada followed with Bill C-18 in 2023. California has passed a Journalism Preservation Act, while South Africa and the European Union are exploring similar measures.
The principle is clear: if tech companies profit from journalism, they must help finance it, but not on their own terms. Fair compensation should extend to all, whether small local outlets and freelance reporters as well as major brands.
Otherwise, authentic reporting will wither, and the information vacuum will be filled by propaganda and bots with the platform owners engaging financially with the likes of US President Donald Trump as a means of asserting their own positions.
The platforms must also bear responsibility for the algorithmic amplification of lies. Just as broadcasters once accepted limits on advertising or harmful content, social networks must be obliged to moderate in the public interest and to flag manipulated material produced by artificial intelligence, particularly with regard to young people. Instagram, which is owned by Meta, sponsors some major news organizations with “political” messaging explaining how it is seeking to protect youth from dangerous content, but this only a feel-good drop in the bucket.
Instagram - both a recreation and a danger.
For over two centuries, newspapers and broadcasters served as society’s watchdogs, funded by readers and advertisers. They have also served as tools in support political or government interests ranging from the Nazis to Soviet propaganda. That social contract has collapsed, but the manipulation - if unchecked - has not.
The question now is whether governments and citizens are prepared to treat journalism as infrastructure as essential as clean water or education.
Public broadcasting ranging from Germany to Canada once provided a shared baseline of credible information. In many countries, however, funding has been gutted in the name of austerity or ideology. In the United States, Trump’s cuts to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting have endangered more than 1,500 local radio and television stations.
Reviving such funding would be one concrete step towards rebuilding trust. Yet public support must come without political strings. Independent oversight, whether citizen boards, transparent budgeting, and multi-party governance, remains vital to prevent state capture. Journalism must serve the public, not the government of the day.
Engaging with youth is critical.
UN Photo
Where governments fear to tread, philanthropy can help. Foundations and private donors already fund investigative projects, environmental reporting, and cross-border collaborations such as the Panama Papers. Even if politicians like Trump have threatened some of the very institutions, such as the Ford Foundation, that have along supported independent journalism.
Some of the major platforms, such as Meta and Google, also provide financial support for reporting. Google claims to be one of the world’s largest supporters of journalism through its own platforms, but less so in grants to actual reporting by both newspapers and freelance journalists.
Far more direct - and open - support is needed.
The realities are stark. Many journalists simply no longer have the financial means to operate effectively. Targeted grants could sustain local newsrooms, support training in under-resourced regions, funded foreign reporting, or finance difficult-to-cover issues that rarely make headlines, such as human trafficking, pollution, migration, or crises in places like Sudan, Congo and the Mediterranean.
Even modest measures, from reduced postal rates for print magazines to travel bursaries for young correspondents, can yield significant public dividends.
It also includes the need for international organizations, such as the United Nations, to nurture independent journalism. This includes providing more no-strings-attached reporting trips to Africa, Asia or Haiti, or even a world-wide press card enabling more open access. Aid agencies also need to nurture more direct personal contacts with journalists rather than hide behind internet or security barriers.
In a similar manner, concerned donors need to be far more pro-active in their support, such as providing free or discount travel on national railways, rather than seek to hamstring the press. Only recently, the Swiss government inexplicably cancelled its official accreditation of foreign correspondents, which APES, the country's foreign press association, maintains severely undermines their ability to operate.
Transparency, again, is key. Philanthropic funding, including corporate grants by energy, tobacco or pharmaceutical companies, must be disclosed and kept at arm’s length from editorial decision-making. As one editor noted: “It really doesn’t matter where the funding comes from as long as it's all on the table. Everyone needs to contribute if they want more effective journalism. What does matter, however, is being open about one’s financial contributors with an understanding on their part that information is not to be tampered with.”
The Rory Peck Awards recognize the unparalleled and often dangerous work of freelance reporters.
Rory Peck Awards, London
One ambitious idea is the creation of a Global Fund for Independent Reporting, modelled on Geneva’s Global Fund for health. Governments, international donors and foundations could contribute to a pooled resource administered transparently by a Board of respected foundations and non-profit organisations such as the World Press Institute, Reporters Without Borders and the Pew Charitable Trusts.
Given International Geneva’s background and location as a crucial humanitarian, conflict mediation and development hub, it would make sense to have such a Fund located in Switzerland.
Based on simple but open procedures, grants, small and large, would go to both news organisations and individual journalists, particularly in regions where local media face economic or political pressure. A Sudanese reporter documenting war crimes, a Haitian photographer covering gang violence, a Burmese exile running an online news site. Or a freelance reporter simply in need of funding to cover air travel to Liberia or Sri Lanka for an urgent story.
The principle is simple: independent reporting is too important to be left to advertising markets or billionaire whims. If the world can fund vaccines and climate adaptation, it can surely fund credible reporting.
Censorship and freedom of expression - Political cartooning is a vital part of 21st century journalismJiho (France)
Courtesy Cartooning for Peace (Geneva) Jiho (France)
Ultimately, sustaining journalism is not only the responsibility of institutions. It requires citizens who value and defend it. Subscriptions, even small ones, matter. So does insisting that elected leaders respect press freedom, disclose information, and protect whistle-blowers.
Individuals can diversify their own “information diets” by following diverse outlets across the spectrum, pay for at least one credible news source, and verify before sharing. Ernie Pollack’s admonition from my schooldays still holds: “Never rely on a single source. Everyone has a different point of view.”
If readers demand higher standards, publishers will respond. If audiences reward depth over outrage, algorithms will follow.
Journalism must also put its own house in order. Audiences will not pay for what they no longer trust. The industry’s credibility depends on accuracy, fairness and humility. Yet these qualities are sometimes lost in the scramble for clicks.
Editors must resist the temptation to sensationalise or to equate balance with false equivalence. The pursuit of objectivity should not mean giving lies equal weight with facts. Transparent corrections, open data, and engagement with readers can rebuild confidence that journalists are guided by truth, not ideology.
Training matters too. The next generation of reporters must be skilled not only in storytelling but in verification, data analysis, digital security and the ability to operate across different media platforms to respond to more diverse audiences. Universities and professional bodies should prioritise these competencies as part of civic education.
The challenges ahead are too vast for individual newsrooms to tackle alone. Increasingly, journalists are pooling resources across borders and platforms: the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, for example, exposed global tax evasion; cross-border teams documented human-rights abuses in Syria and Myanmar.
Such cooperation reduces costs, widens reach, and strengthens protection against censorship. Shared databases, multilingual publishing, and open-source investigations could form the backbone of a new, collaborative press.
Why does all this matter? Because journalism, at its best, is a form of public service. The Fourth Estate. It does more than expose wrongdoing; it connects people to one another.
When a local reporter covers a community meeting, when a foreign correspondent bears witness in a war zone, when an environmental journalist documents disappearing glaciers, they perform acts of civic solidarity. They remind us that truth is not abstract. It is lived experience verified, contextualised, and shared. That sense of connection is also an antidote to polarisation. It is what can help turn a collection of opinions into a functioning democracy.
The threats remain formidable: algorithms amplifying disinformation, regimes jailing reporters, economic models crumbling. But the solutions are within reach.
Journalism will never be perfect, but it remains indispensable. As I have witnessed across four decades of conflict and crisis, accurate reporting saves lives and shapes history. If we want free societies to survive, we must ensure that watchdog journalism not only endures but thrives. For without it, democracy itself becomes the next casualty of war.
Edward Girardet is a Geneva-based foreign correspondent and author. He has reported conflict, humanitarian and environmental issues worldwide for more than 40 years.