Funding media freedom and digital rights: Taking a demand-driven approach to facilitate coordination and collaboration

Over the past decade, the challenges facing media funders have expanded at an alarming pace. It has now become hackneyed to note the vast changes wrought by the rapid global proliferation of the internet and communication technologies: from the crisis of disinformation and misinformation to decreased readership of traditional news providers to the Orwellian-seeming surveillance capabilities of state and private entities. And as the issues balloon and become increasingly complicated, the media freedom community turns to philanthropists for guidance and assistance (read, $$$). At the same time, these challenges are so great, so global, and so intertwined, that any potential remedies need to simultaneously understand local contexts as well as transnational commonalities. However, priorities and processes structuring the distribution of funds related to these issues are often set by board members, staff, advisory committees, and consulting experts primarily located in the United States and Europe. Read More