Lessons from Europe's Fight Against Russian Disinformation

Identifying and combating propaganda is imperative for an informed public to have a sense of identity and make political decisions. In Finland, a “public diplomacy” program is countering Russian propaganda by better understanding how false information spreads.

Four Corners television produced a documentary about the coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan, China that uses footage filmed by residents. The clips, which show people with the virus being taken by police and bodies left on the street, were found on a YouTube channel where they were uploaded to prevent deletion by government censors. The company verified the location, time, and factual context of each clip, and wove them together with original reporting. The raw footage, shot on the ground with smart phones, was particularly memorable and the film received over 12 million views and high ratings in Australia.

Ahmed Albasheer is an Iraqi journalist who uses a combination of humor and grassroots organizing to teach youth in Iraq and across the world about their government's corruption with his show, "The Albasheer Show.” He has been compared to Jon Stewart in how his weekly series airing on YouTube and satellite television engages young people through his comedic timing and straight-forward manner of speaking. As a result, protests have erupted, and the government has killed protesters in response, but Albasheer continues to boost morale and amplify their voices in solidarity.

Tech entrepreneur Andrew Wilkinson started Capital Daily, a daily newsletter emailed to subscribers with news highlights from around Victoria. The local journalism model keeps residents informed on local issues and increases the accountability of decision makers. The publication began with just one reporter and used Facebook and Google advertising to grow to over 40,000 readers. After two years, the newsletter has evolved to produce long-form investigative features. A startup media group plans to replicate the model across the country, by hiring 250 new journalists and launching 50 new outlets by 2023.

Years after international authorities had stopped searching for a man suspected of being an architect of the 1994 Rwandan genocide, a freelance journalist spent eight months searching data and doing on the ground reporting to find the suspect in central France. A story on the find by journalist Théo Englebert led Rwanda to issue an arrest warrant and a French prosecutor to open a counterterrorism investigation. Englebert's sleuthing provides a tutorial on "finding someone who wants to disappear."

Since launching in 2017, the nonprofit Report For America has subsidized hundreds of journalists' salaries to rebuild local-news outlets' ability to provide trusted news coverage of local public affairs. Though there is no lack of available journalists or a need for local news coverage, the program takes aim at fixing a broken business model. The latest cohort of 225 journalists sent to 162 local newsrooms is up from 59. Available to "emerging journalists" who can commit to two years of work, RFA pays half their salaries. The other half is split by the news organization and community donors.

Non-partisan, watchdog journalism has formed a financially healthy platform for Texas Tribune in its first decade, filling a public-interest gap left by shrinkage in the number of statehouse reporters from 95 in 1989 to about 30 in 2008. By hiring an aggressive team of journalists and diversifying its revenue streams, the Tribune turned seed-money grants into a self-sustaining online publishing business whose serious coverage of neglected policy stories inspired Texas lawmakers to coin the term "the Trib effect" for the changes in capitol behavior when it's clear "someone is always watching."

La Liga Contra El Silencio is an alliance of 16 news organizations and hundreds of journalists in Colombia. It protects journalists against threats, which have the effect of censoring reporting on certain topics. La Liga pools resources for in-depth investigative reporting on stories many journalists fear covering and publishes them using the organization’s name in the byline to protect journalists. About 70 stories that brought to light violence and corruption were published in 2018 and 2019, yet the group has not faced any major threats. It could offer a model for how to report under threat worldwide.

Fact-based, data-driven, and solution-oriented journalism can shift the media paradigm from asking “what” to asking “how.” Solutions journalism, known also as constructive journalism in Europe, focuses on data and evidence to shift discourse from political advocacy and ideological debates to problem-solving and productive discussion. Using this approach, students in Eugene, Oregon, brought accountability to municipal administrators who had previously obfuscated the effectiveness of a program to reduce court caseloads.

When a new California law unlocked the disciplinary records on misconduct from 700 police agencies statewide, competing news organizations formed the California Reporting Project to accomplish as a team what would have been daunting, if not impossible, for each news organization individually: compile a database of all the records as they are released. Just months into the project, the resulting news stories informed the public of officers who escaped serious consequences for misconduct, and whose careers benefited from keeping the public unaware.