Learning Report 2021

At Media Defence, we publish an annual ‘learning report’. This report compiles the variety of internal and external evaluations we undertake each year in order to understand the effectiveness and relevance of our programmes. We also do this to explore the impact of legal defence for journalists, in an increasingly contracting space for media freedom globally.

We are committed to transparency and wish to share the lessons and findings from our evaluations with our supporters. This year’s learning report includes a summary of the following programme and project evaluations carried out in 2021:

1. Strategic Output and Outcome Indicators
2. Journalist Impact Survey 2021
3. Environmental Impact Assessment
4. Lawyer Impact Survey 2021
5. Partner Evaluation: Media Foundation for West Africa
6. Litigation Surgery Monitoring and Evaluation

2021 was the second year in our 2020 – 2024 organisational strategy  which seeks to increase our impact, ensuring more journalists and independent media have access to affordable legal support. We provided support in 124 new cases, decreased the speed of approval for our emergency defence grants, and increased the amount of strategic cases we took on. Over 90% of cases come from countries with ‘Difficult,’ Very Serious’ or ‘Problematic’ ranking by RSF’s 2021 World Press Freedom Index.

This year we continued to increase our response rate for the Journalist Impact Survey, from 54% in 2020 to 66% in 2021. 100% of respondents said they would recommend our support.

As part of our Digital Rights Advocates Project, we supported lawyers to hold 7 litigation surgeries in three languages. We also worked with one of our partners to carry out an evaluation on the work that took place under the grant.

We additionally undertook an internal evaluation of our Environmental Impact, and continue to consider our impact in light of the well-established link between climate change and human rights.

Read the full report here.