• by Ray Schultz , February 8, 2024

Donor agencies are giving lip service to media development. But their actual contributions are flat, judging by a new report from the Center for International Media Assistance.  

“Recent world events (e.g., COVID-19 and the invasion of Ukraine), worrying anti-democratic trends, and the negative side of digitalization appear to have spurred the donor agencies to strengthen their policy statements in favor of media development,” the report states. 

But while “the discourse may have intensified, the financial commitments to media have certainly not followed suit,” it continues. 

The total commitment to media development from all countries totaled $385 million in 2019.  

This is only marginally up from the $357 recorded in 2010, and way down from the $489 million seen in 2014. 

The United States was the top media development donor between 2010 and 2019, providing $667 million. Among the top donors, Germany was next with $549 million, Sweden third with $303 million, Japan fourth with $234 million, France fifth with $214 million and the UK sixth with $199 million. 

Six donor countries provide the lion’s share of foreign aid to media development. But they are also the countries that “provide the largest amount of official development assistance overall. Few new countries have answered the siren call and added media development as a priority for international assistance.” 

In addition, the report grimly states that most development agencies are “not equipped with the technical. Expertise to address the sector’s thorniest challenges, including how to improve financial sustainability, build political will for media freedom and independence, and promote local ownership of media development.”

But the study concludes that “at least the major donors are not significantly cutting their aid to journalism. Overall, finance to media development as part of official development aid seems to be holding steady.” 

The study, titled “Are Donors Taking the Journalism Crisis Seriously? An Analysis of Official Aid to Media 2010-2019,” was authored by Mary Myers and Heather Gilberds.