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The sudden cut in US support for civil society organizations abroad is also putting many media outlets in crisis, especially in Central and Eastern Europe. Their voice is important for democracy, but there are not many viable alternatives for their financial sustainability
In recent decades, the European Union, the United States and the Open Society foundations have been important financial supporters of media across Europe. Their funding has allowed many independent newspapers to be born and grow, especially in Central and Eastern Europe. However, the decades-long commitment of these donors is now decreasing in abrupt and unexpected, somehow dramatic, ways.
In August 2023, Open Society announced a drastic downsizing of its activities in Europe, while on January 24 this year the Trump administration announced the immediate suspension of all funding and operations of the government agency USAID, which is expected to be abolished. Also in January, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced major cuts to the company's program that has been supporting fact-checking by dozens and dozens of publications around the world.
The media programmes promoted by the EU do remain operational. However, the EU allocates a very tiny fraction of its budget to this sector – moreover, this amount has to be renegotiated in the coming months, in a context where EU support for civil society organisations is already under considerable pressure .
The structural crisis of the media industry
In Europe and elsewhere, the journalism industry has been in such serious trouble for years that many outlets would not be able to operate any longer – or would have to operate on a much smaller scale – if they did not receive financial support from public institutions or private donors, such as foundations or philanthropists.
An exception is a small number of media outlets that can count on a large number of subscribers or on very enthusiastic and loyal niches, and the outlets that still manage to rely extensively on advertising or sponsorships. However, the latter often publish low-quality journalism, which costs little to produce (a lot of copy-and-paste, and few checks) but manages to generate a large amount of traffic thanks to the ways of functioning of social media. In some countries, pro-government media may also receive direct or indirect forms of support from those in power.
In many cases, investigative and in-depth journalism, collaborative journalism, a lot of quality local journalism – all those manifestations of journalism that truly enrich public debate, keep an eye on the powerful, and nourish lively and plural democracies – no longer have a way of sustaining themselves only through the traditional channels of advertising and financial support from their readers. Both these channels have entered into crisis with the transition to the digital public sphere. “It has become really difficult [for media outlets] to find a sustainable business model that does not rely on some form of funding from institutions,” confirms Peter Erdelyi, director of the Center for Sustainable Media, a organisation based in Hungary.
It's a situation very familiar to anyone who works in the media industry, but one that newspapers tend not to talk about. The reticence derives above all from the desire not to offer further arguments for delegitimization to the many critics of journalists, who are numerous both within public opinion and among the ruling classes. Admitting to receiving – or even depending for their sustainability on – external funding would in fact expose the media outlets even more to the accusation of being hired and hetero-directed. Even more so given that three of the main funders of European media in the last decades have been very unpopular entities such as the European Union, the United States and George Soros’ Open Society foundations.
Protecting editorial independence
At present, OBCT would also be unable to operate if it could not count on the resources which it receives from the Autonomous Province of Trento and from the European Commission (through public calls that we won presenting projects which typically last only one or two years however). In fact, we do not sell advertising and we offer our content and information for free; subscriptions cover just a very tiny fraction of our costs. In the past we also carried out a couple of projects with support by the Open Society foundations.
None of our donors have ever stepped in to “dictate the line” on the type of journalism we do, the stories we choose to cover, and how we choose to do it. The large Western institutional or private donors are in fact, in most cases, sufficiently aware of the delicate nature of their role to envisage clear procedures and mechanisms to ensure the full editorial independence of the publications they support. For their part, the publications that seek or accept this type of funding are sufficiently serious to demand clear guarantees for their editorial freedom and reject any possible interference. To further reduce the risk of being exposed to external influences – or ward off the temptations of self-censorship – most media outlets try to avoid being dependent on a single donor by differentiating their funding sources.
Some specific mechanisms protecting editorial independence are in place. For example, some of the USAID programmes for European media were managed by third-party organizations that acted as a filter between the donor and the individual newsrooms, such as Internews or IREX. In other cases, journalism funding provided by the EU or private foundations passes through third-party projects or organizations, such as Journalismfund, Civitates or IJ4EU, which then distribute the funds to selected outlets based on free decisions and transparent criteria.
Even if some mechanisms for the protection of editorial independence do exist, the opportunity for media outlets to accept funding from public donors is still livelyly discussed within the journalist and media community itself. In particular, the world of investigative journalism has recently been shaken and divided by an investigation promoted by the French newspaper Mediapart, which accused the celebrated transnational OCCRP project of having too close financial ties with the United States.
On the other hand, financial dependence on either advertising or subscriptions also poses risks for editorial independence. Advertising can orient the coverage of certain companies, pushing outlets to gloss over certain issues or to give unjustified visibility to some initiatives promoted by advertisers.
Even subscriptions are not without risks to editorial autonomy: in increasingly polarised political contexts, newspapers can be pressured to bend their editorial line in order to suit the political priorities of their subscribers, who may threaten to unsubscribe if the outlet is perceived as not sufficiently partisan. Independent Hungarian journalists we met last year in Budapest, for example, told us of this tension: objective coverage of the troubles of some opposition forces to the Orban government displeased some readers to the point that they cancelled their subscriptions, and newspapers limited their coverage.
The impact of cuts
According to Oksana Romaniuk, director of the Institute for Mass Information (IMI) in Ukraine, USAID collaborated with about 80% of Ukrainian media. With its 75 million dollar budget, the Media program – established thanks to the support of USAID in 2018 and implemented by Internews – constituted the largest foreign investment in Ukrainian journalism. The Global Forum for Media Development (GFMD) estimates that the US has provided 70-80% of foreign media assistance to Ukraine overall in recent years.
USAID funding has supported independent newspapers, combated disinformation and strengthened organizations that protect press freedom in the country. Also thanks to these efforts, press freedom has seen significant improvements in Ukraine, which now even surpasses some EU countries in Reporters Without Borders’ annual ranking .
As special as it is, the Ukrainian case is not an isolated one. For example, journalist Aleksandar Manasiev argues that USAID has been of great help for the development of the media in North Macedonia. “Through projects funded by USAID and other international organizations, hundreds of journalists and media professionals have undergone professional training [...] Those funds enabled teams to investigate corruption, the rule of law, human rights and other socially important topics,” explains Manasiev. According to GFMD, also in the Western Balkans US funding has covered about 70% of the media assistance provided by foreign countries in recent years.
The end of much funding is having a serious impact on many media outlets across Europe – especially the most exposed ones, such as the ones focusing on quality independent, investigative or in-depth journalism in contexts where press freedom is relatively fragile and the media market is too small to offer sustainable market-based alternatives.
This is the case in many countries in Central and South-Eastern Europe, where the sheer size of the national population limits the number of subscriptions that an outlet can expect to collect. According to Peter Ederly, “if you live in a very small community in Hungary, Poland, Romania or Bulgaria, there is no real money to be made producing content for you. There is not enough advertising, and you can't really afford the subscription model".
Following recent cuts, some European newspapers may be forced to significantly scale back their activities and investments in the development of new skills or products, if not stop them altogether. For example, according to what some representatives of the media and trade associations in Bosnia and Herzegovina report, due to the suspension of US funds, several media outlets in the country are currently unable to pay their salaries. Like it happens elsewhere, investigative journalism and local newspapers are particularly affected.
What next?
Financial difficulties could expose some media outlets in Europe to purchase attempts by oligarchs or entrepreneurs close to political power and interested in taming them. This has already happened, for example, in the last decade to many Hungarian newspapers that were once independent or critical of the Orban government and are now in the hands of entrepreneurs linked to it. “Someone may try to take advantage of the situation to seize control of the media space, dominate it, and turn it into a tool of influence,” warns Oksana Romaniuk. A survey conducted by the institute she heads found that three out of five Ukrainian journalists fear that funding cuts could have “catastrophic consequences”.
To be sure, the public debate in many European countries risks being further impoverished, finding itself with fewer and more fragile voices, and with less accurate and incisive journalistic coverage.
For this reason, following the decisions of the Trump administration, the European Federation of Journalists (EFJ) has made an appeal to all possible European donors to take action and intervene to compensate for the US cuts, which according to EFJ put at risk in particular various Ukrainian and Kosovar newspapers as well as the activity of Belarusian journalists in exile. The president of EFJ, Maja Sever, has invited "European institutions and foundations to mobilise and coordinate their actions to safeguard media pluralism and support independent journalism".
If journalists did not enjoy little popularity – and if the public were more aware of the structural crisis facing the information industry and of its political impact – it would be high time to open a serious debate in Europe on the introduction of some structural public funding to journalism, which is a common good and which nourishes democracy. The order of magnitude of these funding would be very limited compared to many other public expenses. To be sure, appropriate mechanisms – different from the questionable ones which are now in place in Italy – should isolate media outlets from favoritism or pressures coming from the political power, avoid the temptation of self-censorship, and encourage independent, quality journalism. Public funding would also contribute to counter the ongoing trend that limits access to more and more online quality journalistic content to subscribers, preventing anyone who cannot afford one or more subscriptions to access it.
According to Peter Erdely, “the business model of journalism has been disrupted to such an extent that I think public support is now needed. [...] The question is not whether public sector support is ideal. It's not. But the alternative is not having some types of journalism altogether”.
This article benefited from contributions by Andrea Braschayko, Aleksandar Samardjiev, and Lola García-Ajofrín (El Confidencial, Spain).
This article was produced in the framework of PULSE, a European initiative coordinated by OBCT that supports cross-border collaborative journalism.