USAID Is Gone. Its Democratic Legacy Shouldn’t Be. (part 2)

In the wake of the closure of USAID earlier this month and the RIFs at the State Department, I'm posting the second of three posts on lessons learned while managing USAID's media development funding portfolio for the Europe & Eurasia Bureau.

Lesson #2: Evolve assistance as the threats evolve.

First, investing only in the supply side of journalism without addressing the demand side—media literacy—won’t work in today’s digital information environment. USAID’s programs in Armenia, Moldova, Georgia, and North Macedonia integrated media literacy into citizens’ everyday lives, helping them understand how disinformation spreads. We reached diverse audiences—in schools, grocery stores, even sports clubs—using fact-checking, games, and social media.

Second, as authoritarian regimes in Russia, Belarus, and Azerbaijan further tightened their control over the media sector, USAID helped exiled journalists keep reporting—from exposing sanctions evasions in Belarus to a nearly $3 billion money-laundering scheme in Azerbaijan to documenting Russia’s war crimes. Though discreet for safety reasons, this support was essential in keeping those communities and the world informed. Support evolved from emergency relocation to legal aid, mentoring, and business training.

Finally, the rise of lawfare, or abusing judicial processes to undermine rights, demanded a more creative and systemic approach to address threats to press freedom. In Bosnia-Herzegovina, Oslobođenje journalists told the visiting USAID Administrator that it was harder to report now than during the siege of Sarajevo due to legal harassment meant to silence their reporting. This bears repeating: harder to report than during a war. In 2022, USAID launched Reporters Shield, a global mutual defense fund to help media outlets combat SLAPPs (strategic lawsuits against public participation), accessing affordable counsel and legal review before and after publication. This flipped the script on traditional legal defense funds–going from reactive to proactive; from grants to a more financially viable approach; and from response to deterrence of legal harassment.