Our 2025 Annual Report: Democracy Crumbling

This year, we are doing things differently. We wanted to create more space for the journalism our partners are producing, for the realities they are working through, and for the deeper question beneath it all: what kind of support does this work need to last?

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The answers are not always the same.

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We go back to Civio’s early days in Spain, when a small group armed with public data and stubbornness began turning transparency into journalism, and trace that work to the country’s highest court. We sit in on a conversation between KRIK and Fumaça, two newsrooms in very different corners of Europe, trying to solve the same problem: how to build something lasting in places where the old business model has collapsed, and pressure comes in different forms. We return, too, to the Panama Papers ten years on, through a feature that follows not just the impact of the reporting, but the machinery behind it: the tools, trust, security and sustained backing that made the global investigation possible in the first place.

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Together, these stories show that independent journalism does not survive on courage alone. It depends on time, trust, skill, protection and adequate funding.  That is precisely what makes the current moment so precarious.

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Because, despite its fundamental role, the information infrastructure is hanging on by a thread. We have seen the steepest decline in press freedom since 2012. UNESCO reports that comparable contractions occurred only during extraordinary periods, such as World War I and the rise of authoritarianism leading up to World War II. We have become dependent on major tech platforms that prioritise profit over public interest. And the rapid rise of generative AI is taking away whatever financial incentive there was to produce quality information.

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It is not a coincidence that this goes hand in hand with rising authoritarianism. Democratic backsliding reached a tipping point last year: non-democratic regimes now outnumber democracies for the first time in 20 years. Swedish research institute V-Dem reports that 74% of the world population now live in autocracies, with the level of democracy for the average citizen in Western Europe and North America at its lowest level in over 50 years. As a result, we struggle to address the challenges of our time.

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The stories in this Annual Report show us a way forward. They underline that the hard work of our grantee partners pays off: some of it can be measured in court rulings, policy shifts or public access to information. Some of it is harder to quantify, but no less important. In all cases, this work helps make democratic life possible and is a precondition for confronting any of the crises our societies face.

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Unfortunately, research shows that, particularly in Europe, very little funding is available for independent journalism. We are trying to change that. Last year, we grew our funder community to 10 donors. Thanks to their support, over 500 million Europeans now have access to independent news.

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Just like our roads and railways, our information infrastructure needs maintenance. Neglect it for too long, and it won’t be able to cope with the increased demands of our time. But give it sustained investment, and it will thrive. 

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Read the full annual report here.

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