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Our Strategy
Media freedom is in decline around the world. Increasing control of the media sought by governments and other powerful actors has seen a surge in attacks on independent media, with abusive legal actions, violence and an array of restrictive laws. More and more journalists face these threats alone, without the protection of resourced media houses or effective legal representation.
That’s why, as part of our 2020-2024 strategy, we are increasing and deepening the support we offer to our partners, enhancing the availability and quality of legal defence for journalists around the world as well as the coordination of strategic litigation on media freedom and freedom of expression.
Our History
Media Defence was founded in 2008 in the context of a sharply deteriorating media freedom. It originated from a programme of work by the Open Society Initiative (OSI). Faced with an ever-growing demand for media legal defence services which neither they nor others could respond to, the OSI and the Open Society Justice Initiative decided to set up a new entity which would have the capacity to defend not just headline-grabbing media freedom cases, but to respond to the constant barrage of law suits against independent media.
Our Impact
To date, we have supported over 1,000 cases, helping hundreds of journalists in 110 countries. Our work has contributed to prevent over 300 years of detention for media workers and avoided £500m in damages. We have supported 40 partners and have trained nearly 150 lawyers.
