More than 1,000 news organisations and support agencies in over 100 countries joined World News Day on 28 September, a WAN-IFRA-backed campaign championing trusted journalism and press freedom.
WEBDESK – MEDIABITES
More than 1,000 news organisations and support agencies in over 100 countries took part in this year’s World News Day, which culminated on 28 September, according to WAN-IFRA, the World Association of News Publishers.
The campaign coincided with the United Nations’ International Day for Universal Access to Information, underlining the link between independent journalism and the public’s right to know.
A 3-point call to audiences
This year’s campaign urged people everywhere to know the facts, understand what matters and choose trusted journalism.
Stig Kirk Ørskov, CEO of WAN-IFRA, said he was delighted to see the campaign bring the association’s purpose so powerfully to life. That purpose, he said, is to unite media globally to strengthen trusted journalism and defend press freedom.
“Every newsroom that takes part makes the collective case for trusted journalism stronger,” Ørskov said, adding that each participant carries that message into another community, country and language.
Global partners behind the campaign
WAN-IFRA helped organise the campaign, with its World Editors Forum deeply involved. Ørskov said he was immensely proud of the association’s role.
He thanked Cherilyn Ireton; Branko Brkic, founder of Project Kontinuum; and David Walmsley, Editor-in-Chief of The Globe and Mail and President of the World Editors Forum, for bringing World News Day to life.
Trust at the centre
World News Day has grown into one of the largest coordinated efforts by the global news industry to remind audiences of the value of credible, fact-based reporting at a time of widespread misinformation.
From 17 newsrooms to 1,000
The idea started in 2017 as a challenge Walmsley put to the news industry. The Canadian Journalism Foundation (CJF) then held the first World News Day on 3 May 2018, building on the UN’s World Press Freedom Day, with 17 participating organisations.
Backed by the Google News Initiative, the movement grew to 500 newsrooms within 4 years through its partnership with WAN-IFRA’s World Editors Forum. In 2021, those 500 outlets, ranging from the Fiji Sun to the Financial Times, focused on the role of credible journalism in covering the climate crisis.
Today, the campaign is run jointly by the World Editors Forum, the CJF and Project Kontinuum, and this year it set out to do something journalism rarely does: explain its own process.
