At UNGA80, leaders call for treating journalism as global public good

A group of 11 leading economists issued a stark warning this week: The global crisis of access to reliable information poses an existential threat to economic growth, human welfare, and global development efforts broadly. In a new report, the High-Level Panel on Public Interest Media convened by the Forum on Information and Democracy argues that public interest media is as vital to the 21st-century economy as central banks are to financial systems, providing the trust and accountability needed for markets to function. If governments don’t step in to protect and invest in public interest media, they caution, disinformation will continue to erode economies, weaken social welfare, and undermine democracy itself. At Devex Impact House @ UNGA 80, Obiageli Ezekwesili, a member of the High-Level Panel on Public Interest Media and former vice president for the World Bank’s Africa region, joined Nishant Lalwani, CEO of the International Fund for Public Interest Media, or IFPIM, to unpack new evidence showing why media must be treated as essential economic infrastructure. “We must have the kind of public journalism that the people can trust, because without trust, we know that institutions cannot work well,” Ezekwesili told the audience. “We don’t want a situation in our world where we just say we care about an inclusive world, and yet we exclude people just because an infrastructure like media and access to information is considered something that only those with the means to get it should have.” Ezekwesili warned that when information becomes a privilege, inequality deepens — limiting people’s ability to make sound choices, whether political or economic. For Africa in particular, where private media markets often fail to serve the public, she argued that treating journalism as a global public good is indispensable for both governance and growth. Lalwani, who leads the multilateral initiative that was formed to tackle some of these very challenges, echoed those concerns. He stressed that public interest journalism plays a stabilizing role in societies, much like central banks do for markets. He pointed to Moldova’s 2023 presidential election as an example: Russia reportedly spent $100 million attempting to sway the outcome, but IFPIM made a relatively small investment of $1.3 million to support independent outlets such as Ziarul de Gardă to expose corruption and foreign interference, which he said helped to safeguard the election’s integrity. “You don’t need large amounts of money to have tremendous impact with media,” Lalwani said. “While, you know, we’ve been suffering as much as others from the cuts … media is a really cost-effective way of actually investing some of the development capital that's left.” Since its founding, IFPIM has financed more than 120 media outlets in 30 countries — from supporting Palestinian voices to building new business models in Brazil, South Africa, and Indonesia. It also supported the High-Level Panel on Public Interest Media, part of its effort to demonstrate the economic value of independent journalism. IFPIM is funded by 20 different donors, including the governments of Sweden, France, and Switzerland, and philanthropies such as the Ford Foundation, Luminate, and the Open Society Foundations. The U.S. Agency for International Development had been IFPIM’s largest funder until the agency was dismantled earlier this year. Since then, independent media outlets supported by IFPIM have faced sharp revenue losses worldwide — with grant cuts as high as 40% to 60% in Eastern Europe, a region where USAID was especially active in backing independent media. The High-Level Panel’s statement frames journalism not as a luxury, but as a cost-effective development investment. Public interest media, they argue, curbs corruption, strengthens financial markets, and builds resilience against disinformation. Yet while autocratic regimes pour billions into propaganda, donor support for independent media remains meager, with just 0.05% of official development assistance directly channeled to media organizations in partner countries between 2016 and 2022, according to IFPIM. “What information does to support prosperity is no different from what education or transport infrastructure does,” Ezekwesili said, underscoring the need for public policy that recognizes journalism as a foundational good. Lalwani and Ezekwesili added that philanthropy and the private sector — particularly tech companies profiting from vast information flows — must also step up. The panel’s report outlines two priorities for governments: invest in new models to safeguard free and independent media, and actively shape information markets to reward facts over lies. Mechanisms such as IFPIM, they argue, demonstrate how pooled, independent funding vehicles can deliver scale and impact — much as has been done in health and education. And they emphasize the urgency for action now, because as the information crisis collides with the rise of generative AI, the stakes are only rising. “Garbage in, garbage out,” Lalwani warned, noting that accurate journalism is essential to grounding AI systems in reliable data.