Journalism does not just inform. It is part of the infrastructure democracy depends on

Last week, to mark World News Day, EPC Chairman Christian Van Thillo published an open letter to the European Commission. Its message was clear: journalism cannot survive on principles alone, and Europe must defend the business that sustains it. Because what ultimately needs protecting is not the business model in the abstract, but what it produces: reporting that uncovers facts, investigates wrongdoing, explains events, tells the stories of communities and gives citizens a reliable record of the world around them.

But why should this matter beyond the media sector itself?

A recent UNESCO report, The Value of Journalism, produced with DW Akademie and the International Fund for Public Interest Media, provides a compelling answer. Drawing together academic research on journalism's role in economic development, national security, elections and crisis response, it shows that journalism does far more than keep people informed. It affects how institutions behave, how citizens participate in democracy, how effectively corruption is exposed and how resilient societies are to manipulation.

Journalism is often described as a public good which is true, but it understates what the evidence shows. It is also part of the infrastructure on which democratic, social and economic life depends.

Of course, that value cannot be captured by economic measures alone. It is found in the daily work of journalists finding out what is happening, telling stories that would otherwise go untold, testing claims, challenging power and creating the record on which public understanding depends. The UNESCO research helps quantify some of the benefits that flow from that work, but the starting point is the journalism itself.

Yet the economic evidence alone is striking. UNESCO cites research across 97 countries showing that declining press freedom is associated with a 1 to 2 per cent reduction in real GDP growth. It also points to evidence that every $1 invested in journalism can generate more than $100 in public savings through recovered funds, better public services and reduced corruption.

These findings should feed directly into work on Europe's Democracy Shield. If Europe wants to strengthen democratic resilience, it cannot focus only on combating disinformation, foreign interference and manipulation once they occur. It must also strengthen the institutions that make democratic accountability possible in the first place. Independent journalism scrutinises power, exposes corruption and waste, and gives citizens the information they need to hold governments and institutions to account.

Paradoxically, just as the measurable value of reliable journalism is becoming clearer, the economic mechanisms that finance its production are under increasing pressure. UNESCO places its findings in the context of declining public funding, pressure on media revenues from social platforms and AI, and the resulting risk that audiences have less access to trusted, independent information.

Disinformation and the cost of manipulation

UNESCO estimates that disinformation costs the global economy between $355 billion and $516 billion every year. That should change the way Europe thinks about journalism.

Independent journalism is part of the infrastructure that protects societies against manipulation, exposes falsehoods and helps identify those seeking to distort the information ecosystem. President von der Leyen's warning about "cognitive warfare" recognises the scale of the threat. Europe's policy response should also recognise the value of one of its strongest defences against it.

For countries closest to Russia, this is not a theoretical argument. Estonia and Latvia have long treated the integrity of the information space as part of national resilience. In Estonia, support has been directed towards independent Russian-language journalism that can provide an alternative to pro-Kremlin narratives, while public broadcasting has also been strengthened to serve Russian-speaking audiences. It is clear that a strong domestic media environment helps a country withstand disinformation and maintain a shared information space.

Latvia has taken a similar approach, treating the media environment as one of the pillars of resilience against disinformation and foreign influence, alongside strategic communication and media literacy. The lesson for Europe as a whole is important. Countries on Russia's border have understood that resilience cannot be built only by detecting hostile information after it appears. It also depends on ensuring that citizens have access to credible, independent journalism before hostile narratives take hold.

Europe is rightly investing more in cybersecurity, countering foreign interference and tackling disinformation. It is encouraging that the role of trusted journalism is increasingly part of those wider debates about resilience and security.

Disinformation itself is not new, but its scale, speed and economics have changed. AI tools can now produce convincing false content cheaply and at enormous volume, while social media, messaging platforms and search can distribute it almost instantaneously. At the same time, press freedom is under pressure in many countries, shrinking precisely the space in which reliable, independent reporting can challenge falsehoods.

The damage extends beyond people believing an individual false claim. Disinformation erodes trust itself, in institutions, elections, public health and eventually in the possibility of establishing shared facts at all.

That makes prevention as important as correction and the question is not only how to remove false information once it has spread, but what makes societies less vulnerable to it in the first place.

How journalism builds resilience against disinformation

The UNESCO research shows that people who regularly consume reliable news are, on average, better equipped to recognise unreliable information when they encounter it. Credible reporting creates a baseline against which new claims can be judged. Without that baseline, people are more dependent on whichever version of events reaches them first.

One study drawing on AFP's fact-checking operation compared stories that were fact-checked with similar stories that were not. Facebook posts subsequently rated false saw their circulation fall by around 8 per cent. More interestingly, users who had shared a post that was later fact-checked became less likely to share false information afterwards. The intervention appeared to change behaviour, not simply visibility.

This is why trusted journalism matters before a crisis begins. Its value lies not only in correcting the record afterwards, but in giving people a reliable frame of reference before manipulation takes hold.

Journalism changes how institutions behave

One of the most interesting findings in the UNESCO report is that journalism's impact is not confined to what actually gets published.

Officials, civil servants and public bodies can change their behaviour simply because they know scrutiny is possible. This helps explain a relationship that researchers have observed for years: countries with greater media freedom tend to have stronger democracy and economic development, and lower levels of corruption and poverty.

The research helps show the mechanism at work. Journalism operates through anticipation as much as exposure.

A well-known example comes from The News & Observer in North Carolina. Its 2008 investigation into failures in the state's probation system led to officials being dismissed and major reforms being introduced. Stanford economist James Hamilton later calculated that for every dollar the newsroom spent on the investigation, the state received $287 in net policy benefits in the first year alone.

Another study, led by political scientist Dylan Groves, tested the effect directly. Fifteen regional radio stations investigated failures in public services across 206 communities in Tanzania, including broken water points, absent teachers and missing medical supplies. Independent auditors found measurable improvements seven months later.

Crucially, officials were not responding primarily to public opinion. They were responding because they were concerned about how the failures reported by journalists would be viewed by their own superiors.

Journalism therefore creates a channel of scrutiny that runs through institutions themselves. Its influence can begin before a story is published, simply because decision-makers know their actions may be examined.

Journalism changes elections too

The same mechanism applies to democratic accountability during elections. Journalism's role is not limited to helping people decide how to vote. The evidence suggests that it can also change how candidates and elected officials behave.

In Delhi, researchers conducted a large field experiment in which some municipal councillors were told two years before an election that a newspaper would publish a report card on their performance. Councillors who knew they would face this scrutiny increased pro-poor spending in high-slum areas well before anything was published. Their political parties subsequently benefited electorally when those spending records were strong.

Brazil provides another example. From 2003, the federal government began randomly auditing municipalities and publishing the findings, including through local media. Mayors implicated in corruption experienced a substantial fall in their chances of re-election, and the effect was consistently stronger in places where local radio stations reported the findings.

The conclusion is straightforward. Elections depend on more than the existence of a ballot box. They depend on voters having reliable information about those seeking power, and on politicians knowing that their actions can be scrutinised.

What journalism needs to work

None of these benefits occurs automatically. Journalism needs institutions capable of acting on what it reveals, courts that can pursue corruption, regulators that can enforce the law and electorates able to hold public officials to account. It also needs journalists who can work safely and independently, and news organisations with the resources to investigate, verify and defend their reporting.

Above all, it needs a sustainable economic foundation. When platforms control how audiences discover reporting, AI-generated answers increasingly substitute for visits to the journalism from which they draw, and publishers' ability to build sustainable relationships with audiences and advertisers is constrained, the consequences reach far beyond the media industry.

The scale of investment required should also be kept in perspective. The Forum on Information and Democracy estimates that securing healthy independent journalism and information environments worldwide would require up to 0.1 per cent of global GDP annually, around the equivalent of just 15 days of global military expenditure.

But the value of journalism cannot be captured by economic measures alone. It is found every day in the reporter sitting in a council chamber, the correspondent at a border, the journalist following a court case, the newsroom checking a claim before publication, the investigator pursuing a story for months and the local paper explaining what a decision will mean for the people who live there.

These are the people who find out what is happening, tell the stories that would otherwise go untold and create the record on which public understanding depends. When journalism is strong, power knows it can be scrutinised, citizens have reliable information on which to act and societies are harder to manipulate.

That is ultimately what must be sustained: the ability of journalists to do the work, and of publishers to invest in telling those stories. Europe cannot build a Democracy Shield while allowing one of the foundations of democratic resilience to weaken inside it.