DC-Sustainability launches inaugural annual report

After nearly a year since the launch of the Dynamic Coalition on the Sustainability of Journalism and News Media Sustainability (DC-Sustainability), today marks the release of our inaugural annual report. The launch represents the culmination of our engagement in the 2020 Internet Governance Forum (IGF) with the DC-Sustainability session, and comes at a time when journalism and news media around the world are under serious threat.

You can access the report here.

The COVID-19 pandemic has deeply exacerbated existing challenges to journalism and news media sustainability, and also posed an unexpected challenge to the DC-Sustainability’s action plan that was created after IGF 2019. Despite these challenges, however, we were able to fulfill our goal of creating our first annual report. This document represents concerted multi-stakeholder effort to produce case studies and feature analyses that examine the intersections among journalism and news media sustainability, Internet governance, and digital policy.

Edited by the DC-Sustainability’s co-coordinators, Daniel O’Maley (Center for International Media Assistance – CIMA), Hesbon Hansen Owilla (Aga Khan University, Kenya), and Courtney C. Radsch (Committee to Protect Journalists – CPJ), it features six cases studies and analyses along with an introduction by the co-coordinators and a preface by Preface by Anriette Esterhuysen, the chair of the IGF’s Multistakeholder Advisory Group (MAG).

The contents of the report includes:

• A case study of algorithmic removal of news content in Serbia by Tanja Maksic (Balkan Investigative Reporting Network)
• A case study of Facebook bias against sexual and reproductive health and rights advertisements drawing from the Love Matters Network by Anastasiya Pak and Anna Hengeveld (RNW Media)
• An analysis of the politics of labels and how tech platforms regulate state media by Courtney C. Radsch (CPJ)
• An analysis of how big tech’s profit machine and business model is distorting the public sphere and threatening democracy by Nathalie Maréchal, Ellery Roberts Biddle, Jessica Dheere, and Rebecca MacKinnon (Ranking Digital Rights)
• A policy paper examining how the European Union can turn digital platform regulation into a tool for democracy, particularly to sustain journalism during and after the COVID-19 pandemic by Olaf Steenfadt (Reporters Without Borders)
• The report concludes with an overview of the various threats to media sustainability and freedom of expression in the digital era by Michael J. Oghia and Mira Milosevic (Global Forum on Media Development)

In addition to the annual report, we also submitted a substantive paper to the Dynamic Coalition Main Session.

We cannot thank enough the people who made this possible, including our contributors, the co-coordinators, Daniel, Malak Monir, and CIMA for their support in preparing and editing the report, Anriette for her precious time, and Studio B for their work with the design and layout.

We’ll keep our community updated about next steps over the DC-Sustainability over our mailing list, so join us there in case you have comments and questions or you would like to participate in the 2021 action plan.

Once again, you can access the annual report here, and the session recording is below: