Tag: WAN-IFRA

Your right to know: Why journalism and access to information matter more than ever
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Independent journalism and access to public information are mutually reinforcing: societies cannot remain informed or resilient if either is undermined, write David Walmsley and Tawfik Jelassi, who stress that defending the right to know is not optional.
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Today is both World News Day and the International Day for Universal Access to Information – a good time to remember that if we lose our fundamental universal right to access to information, and if independent journalists lose the ability to report the facts, then our rights and democracies may vanish entirely.

Access to information is a fundamental human right empowering us all to make informed decisions, to participate in democratic processes, and hold our leaders accountable. It’s also critical for survival in a host of situations.

In a natural disaster, timely updates about evacuation routes, shelter locations, and weather conditions can mean the difference between life and death.

In public health emergencies – as we saw during the COVID-19 pandemic – accurate information about symptoms, prevention methods, and treatment options helps people protect themselves and others.

And in conflict zones, knowing which areas are safe and how to access humanitarian aid is vital.

Today, 139 countries have access to information (ATI) legal frameworks and 90 per cent of the world’s population lives in a country where this right is enshrined.

Just 30 years ago, fewer than 20 countries were in this club.

UNESCO data shows that in 2022, 3.5 million public information requests were processed; in 2024, that number had risen to 6.7 million – a clear sign that people want transparency.

The global number of information requests is also increasing with the advent of digital solutions, which facilitate their processing.

But major gaps remain in some regions of the world: In Africa, data gathered in 2024 by the Africa Freedom of Information Centre, showed that 29 out of the 55 countries in the region have ATI laws, but implementation is often patchy.

UNESCO helped to set up the African Network of Information Commissioners (ANIC) which enables oversight bodies across the continent to communicate regularly on the most effective ways to implement and enforce ATI laws, and helps to raise the profile of the access to information in human rights for a on the continent.

Access to public information is an important resource for journalists, just as journalists are essential vectors for enabling citizens to access information. Journalism has always been a key bridge between governments and the people.

When officials stay silent, journalists investigate. They verify information, and tell the public what’s really going on. Journalism isn’t just a job: it’s a public service.

Behind every important news story is someone asking hard questions. Journalists make regular use of access to information laws to conduct their research and break stories that lead to meaningful change.

But this crucial democratic check is increasingly under threat. Journalists face violence, censorship, and online harassment.

In 2024, 70% of journalists around the world who responded to a UNESCO survey said they had experienced attacks ranging from online harassment, to legal threats and actual violence when reporting on environmental issues.

Independent newsrooms are being squeezed financially. Disinformation clogs our feeds, often spreading faster than facts. The fog of lies grows thicker, while trust in truth fades.

This is what we see, for example, in issues related to climate disruption.

This led the International Court of Justice and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights to both recognise that access to environmental information was essential for addressing this critical issue. Because you can’t protect what you can’t see or understand.

So what can we do?

We can urge our governments to support quality journalism by supporting independent media and fully enforce access to information laws. And we can call out disinformation as soon as we spot it, and push politicians, social media platforms, and AI companies to be more accountable.

Access to information is not a threat, but an opportunity for our societies. Today, and every day, let‘s all defend our right to know.

By David Walmsley, President of WAN-IFRA’s World Editors Forum, and Dr Tawfik Jelassi, UNESCO Assistant Director General for Communication and Information

This article was commissioned to mark World News Day and the International Day for Universal Access to Information.
September 28, 2025
Turning news into action: Engaging Gen Z and Millennials locally
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Leaders of the award-winning, hyperlocal The Green Line share how they engage readers with news they can use in their daily lives; links they can use to fact-check information, and in-person community meetings to talk through the local issues that matter to them.
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It’s undeniable that the public — especially Gen Zs and Millennials — are turning away from the news, whether that’s from a lack of trust or a lack of interest.

Last year, the Reuters Institute found that more and more young people struggle with identifying trustworthy news sources.

This comes at a time when creators and influencers eclipse journalists and news organisations online, and as AI seeps into more aspects of content creation, according to the institute’s 2024 Digital News Report.

So how can journalists cut through the noise, and gain our audience’s trust?

The first line of defense against mis- and dis-information is hyperlocal publications, which reflect readers’ daily reality in their reporting.

Local journalists are uniquely positioned to build a solid foundation of trust by embedding in the communities they report with and for.

They’re able to relay factual, tangible information in relatable ways. They’re also best positioned to practice community engagement by seeking out and responding to their audience’s information needs.

But that’s no longer enough.

Despite the rise of community-driven journalism over the past decade, news fatigue is real. That’s understandable given the relentless stream of bad news — from climate disasters and genocide to starvation and the erosion of democracy — around the globe.

So, when news becomes stressful and alienating, what’s the role of journalism? And how do we deliver valuable and trustworthy information to a disengaged audience?

According to The Green Line publisher Anita Li in her Nieman Lab prediction for journalism last year, the answer is community engagement 2.0, which she describes as “levelling up community engagement best practices to encourage the public to move from engaging with the news to engaging with the world — that is, their neighbourhood, city, province/state, country — around them.”

That’s what our team does at The Green Line.

We’re an award-winning hyperlocal publication focused on producing information that’s useful and user-friendly, and helps people navigate day-to-day issues — such as responding to an eviction notice or finding affordable groceries nearby.

We skip the anxiety-inducing details. With our guides and tools, readers don’t have to trawl through a ton of text before getting to the nugget of information that actually helps.

It’s always right up front. For example, we recently put together an interactive map of free bathrooms and Wi-Fi spots across Toronto, videos decrypting the city’s most confusing underground walking routes and more.

Beyond mutual aid, when reporting on policy and systemic issues, we provide information to help people advocate for themselves through voting and other democratic processes.

For example, in our Ripple Effect newsletter, we include a “civic watchlist” of City Hall meetings that Torontonians can attend to share their views.

And through The Green Line’s Documenters Canada program, we bring the public in on our news-gathering workflow by training and paying community members to take notes at public meetings where municipal decisions are made.

It’s a balancing act between effecting broad policy change and addressing individuals’ immediate needs with small, but effective, solutions.

Through all our work, The Green Line never tells our audience what to do. Instead, we equip them with the knowledge to make decisions themselves — a skill that’s particularly important in a culture that dissuades critical thinking.

For example, alongside rigorous reporting, our team invites readers to “fact-check yourself.” Every article ends with a list of non-partisan, credible sources for those who want to dig deeper.

This was especially handy with two elections earlier this year.

The Green Line produced guides to party platforms that outline where the Liberal, Conservative, New Democratic and Green parties of Canada stand when it comes to our five pillars of livability: housing, jobs, food, commuting and health.

As always, we linked each and every source used to collect this information.

Finally, The Green Line meets our audience not just where they are in the virtual realm (through personable videos on TikTok, infographic carousels on Instagram and short docs on YouTube), but also IRL.

Almost every month, we host an event to bring together Torontonians to commiserate and brainstorm solutions around a particular problem, whether that’s navigating the cost of housing or finding third spaces in Toronto.

It’s part of our four-step theory-of-change model, the Action Journey, which we recently trademarked.

With every issue, our team rolls out an explainer breaking down a systemic problem in week one; we dive into existing solutions, and provide tools and guides, in week two; we meet and brainstorm in week three; then finally, we send crowdsourced, community-driven solutions back to everyone who participated in this month-long process.

Our intentional and friendly gatherings help people feel less alienated by their city’s problems.

We also invite community leaders and grassroots organisations that can offer resources to join us.

Most importantly, Torontonians get to develop relationships with other residents so they can support each other. In a world that’s becoming increasingly virtual, in-person connections are rare and valued.

Above all, The Green Line readers get to know us — and ultimately grow to trust us — so we can support them better.

By Yara El Murr (managing editor) and Anita Li (publisher), The Green Line

This article was commissioned as part of World News Day – a global campaign to highlight the value of journalism. It is organised by WAN-IFRA’s World Editors Forum, Project Kontinuum and The Canadian Journalism Foundation.
September 27, 2025
You deserve the truth, not AI’s interpretation of it
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To understand the world around us we need reliable and rigorous reporting, with AI as a tool that amplifies such journalism rather than exploits and distorts it, writes Liz Corbin and Vincent Peyrègne.
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We all want to understand the world around us.

Perhaps we want more clarity about the war in Gaza, or what our government is doing about the healthcare our family relies on.

It might be something as simple as changes to a bus route that will affect our daily commute.

No matter how momentous or mundane the issue, we have a right to news we can trust.

We’ve all been there, scrolling our feed, seeing an astonishing clip, or a shocking must-share story. But now we must constantly question what’s real and what’s the creation of artificial intelligence.

AI-generated output is so convincing today and shaping so much of the information we consume that we risk being unable to trust anything anymore. And mistrust is the fuel that drives conspiracism, social polarisation and democratic disengagement.

In reality, the integrity of what we call ‘news’ is being eroded by the tools that are meant to help us make sense of the world.

This World News Day, we want to underline that the public are entitled to the facts that professional journalists and the organisations they work for worldwide are committed to finding, corroborating and sharing.

However, the tech companies building AI systems that millions of people use daily are falling far short of their responsibility to truth.

Original research carried out this year by the BBC found that half of AI-generated answers to news-related requests left out important details and made other key errors.

The AI assistants they tested consistently churned out garbled facts, fabricated or misattributed quotes, decontextualised information or paraphrased reporting with no acknowledgement.

So what? It’s useful and saves time, it’ll improve, we can live with the errors.

Except we’re not talking about a cake recipe or holiday recommendations. Democracy is at stake, because a society with no common understanding of what’s true can’t make informed choices.

And individuals who rely on a deceptive distortion of originally independent, accurate journalism risk losing themselves in a toxic mire of half-truths and bad-faith manipulation.

This isn’t faraway, abstract paranoia. The internet is already inundated with synthetic fakery designed to deceive, drive clicks, and promote vested interests.

AI-generated voices, faces, and headlines are degrading the information ecosystem, often with no clear provenance or accountability.

Meanwhile, the output of journalists serving the public interest, especially in local, regional, and independent media, is being scraped without permission, algorithmically repackaged and redistributed with no credit or compensation.

This phenomenon is arguably more pernicious than the glaring, outrageous deepfakes we have all seen because the inaccuracies are subtle, plausible and more likely to mislead.

We are witnessing the sabotage of news we need to be able to rely on, and that is draining already depleted reserves of public trust.

So, what can be done?

The European Broadcasting Union and WAN-IFRA, together with a fast-growing collective of other organisations representing thousands of professional journalists and newsrooms around the world, are calling for urgent changes to how AI developers interact with news and the people who produce it.

Many of the broadcasters and news publishers we represent are using AI responsibly to enhance their journalism without compromising editorial integrity, such as through automating translation, helping detect misinformation, or personalising content.

They are mindful that the deployment of these tools must be principled, transparent and carefully handled.

That’s why we are presenting five clear requirements to AI tech companies. These are not radical; they are realistic, common-sense standards that any ethical technology developer can and should embrace:
1. No content without consent. AI systems must not be trained on news content without permission. That content is intellectual property created through rigorous work and public trust. Unsanctioned scraping is theft that undermines both.
1. Respect value. High-quality journalism is expensive to produce but vital for society’s wellbeing. AI tools benefiting from that work must compensate its creators fairly and in good faith.
1. Be transparent. When AI-generated content feeds on news sources, those sources should always be clearly cited and linked because accuracy and attribution matter. We are entitled to know where information came from and if it differs from the original.
1. Protect diversity. AI tools should amplify pluralistic, independent, public interest journalism. A robust, healthy information environment requires a representative cross-section of voices.
1. Work with us. We invite AI companies to enter a serious, solutions-driven dialogue with the news industry. Together, we can develop standards for accuracy, safety, and transparency, but only if tech companies see journalists as partners, and not as suppliers of free data to be mined and monetised.
We consider this a civic challenge that affects every person who relies on credible information to make decisions about their life, to form credible opinions or decide whom to vote for.

Tech companies talk a lot about trust, but trust is not built on talk. We’re calling on the leaders of the AI revolution to get a handle on this problem now.

They have the power to shape the future of information, but we don’t yet see them taking their tools’ dangerous shortcomings, and the potential consequences of them, seriously enough.

Without urgent, corrective action, AI won’t just distort the news – it will destroy the public’s ability to trust in anything and anyone, which will be disastrous news for us all.

Liz Corbin is Director of News at the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), and Vincent Peyrègne is CEO of WAN-IFRA.

This article was commissioned to mark World News Day on September 28, a global news industry campaign.to highlight the value of journalism.
September 24, 2025