Type: Blog Post
If anyone needed to be convinced about the importance of press freedom, the events surrounding World Press Freedom Day on May 3 provided ample evidence. Just days before the meeting, Freedom House reported that its annual global press freedom index had suffered the sharpest decline in a decade. To t...

Type: Publication
In this report, Anne Nelson, a former journalist now teaching at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, examines recent trends in private U.S. funding of media development projects around the world. While U.S. foundations have long funded both “media development” and...

Type: Donor Profile
The Media Democracy Fund (MDF) supports “media and technology policy organizations working to advance the public interest and human rights in the digital age.” It was founded in 2006 by Helen Brunner, who previously worked as a foundation consultant on freedom of expression, communications polic...

Type: Blog Post
This week, CIMA hosted a panel of experts from around the media development community to engage in a debate about where the field is headed. At CIMA, we’ve organized our thinking on media development into four interconnected issue areas that reflect macro concepts in the field: effectiveness, sust...

Type: Blog Post
By Ariane Gottlieb 2024 was a turbulent year for independent journalism. Media outlets continued to fight for financial sustainability and editorial autonomy amid deepening autocratization and a deteriorating landscape for digital freedoms. CIMA worked to identify potential responses to these challe...

Type: Blog Post
By Noah Arjomand In August 2021, the Taliban upended two decades of international media development efforts in Afghanistan. Both the press and the entertainment industry had been relative success stories amid an otherwise bleak landscape of a corrupt and ineffective donor-dependent state and persist...

Type: Blog Post
As the global journalism industry struggles to adapt to shrinking revenue brought on by the failure of traditional business models, Big Tech companies continue to dominate the digital advertising market. This uneven playing field has led policymakers in the US, EU, and Australia to attempt to rebala...

Type: Blog Post
By CIMA Staff For the Spanish version, see here. The Center for International Media Assistance has long focused on promoting the sustainability of independent media worldwide as one of its core values and areas of activity. A current project called Velocidad serves as a clear example of efforts by ...

Type: Blog Post
By the Media Institute of Southern Africa The landmark Windhoek Declaration, signed in Namibia in 1991, signaled Southern Africa’s commitment to working in solidarity to support a free and independent media in the region. Thirty years later, independent journalism in many Southern African countrie...

Type: Publication
When donors provide assistance to the media sector, they frequently back projects that aim to strengthen the media’s contribution to good governance in some way or another. This kind of funding is consistent with recent declarations made by the international community on the importance of protecti...