Investigative information organizations throughout the globe are scrambling to outlive and fearing a backlash from authoritarian regimes following the Trump administration’s overseas help freeze and different strikes to dismantle the U.S. Company for Worldwide Improvement.
The USA allotted $268 million in 2025 to help impartial media and the free movement of data. A USAID truth sheet from 2023 that was on its web site earlier than the location went darkish on Feb. 1, confirmed the company supplied funding to greater than 700 non-state information retailers and 6,000 journalists, the press freedom group Reporters With out Borders reported.
Autocrats who’ve lengthy tried to manage the media have cheered the overseas help freeze. A spokesman for Russia’s International Ministry described USAID as “a machine for interfering in inner affairs” and “a mechanism for altering regimes.” El Salvador’s president accused USAID of utilizing its funds to “gas dissent [and] finance protests.” And Iran’s state-run media praised assist cuts that it described as “slicing the funds of foreign-based opposition.”
The Trump administration’s resolution “is displaying authoritarian regimes: ‘Oh, they closed USAID with such ease, closed their web site, made them vanish from historical past,’” mentioned Rawan Damen, the director of Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism, which obtained U.S. overseas help. “Possibly they’ll subsequent say, ‘We’re not proud of ARIJ. OK, we are able to erase them, too.’”
For ARIJ, one of many main investigative retailers within the Center East, the help freeze erased roughly 20% of its funds. Like many different retailers, the abruptness of the funding cuts and accompanying stop-work orders compounded the monetary harm. Information organizations additionally incurred bills in 2024 that haven’t been reimbursed as a result of assist freeze, and had already employed journalists and launched tasks on the idea that they’d obtain promised U.S. funds within the present yr.
“There may be complete chaos about what this implies,” Damen mentioned. “No person is aware of what’s taking place, no one is allowed to talk to anyone.”
We’re working at a time when investigative journalism has by no means been extra vital, or extra challenged,
— Gerard Ryle, ICIJ’s govt director
ICIJ obtained a grant from the State Division to construct newsroom capability, which was slated to cowl $466,000 in bills in 2024, and $648,000 in bills this yr. The State Division’s help accounted for six.2% of ICIJ’s bills in 2024 and eight.6% of its funds in 2025.
“ICIJ will proceed to carry the highly effective to account it doesn’t matter what setbacks we’d face. We hope that new and present funders will perceive and assist us proceed in our mission to show wrongdoing in order that the world could make it proper,” mentioned Gerard Ryle, ICIJ’s govt director.
“We’re working at a time when investigative journalism has by no means been extra vital, or extra challenged. Bringing a whole bunch of the world’s prime investigative reporters collectively to work on cross-border tasks is one thing we’ve pioneered, and … it’s going to play a fair larger function in defending the general public curiosity going ahead as a result of nobody nation can cease it.”
The ripple results of the help freeze are intensive and in addition threaten to cripple information organizations that not directly depend on USAID and State Division help by way of teams such because the Nationwide Endowment for Democracy. The non-governmental group is funded by the U.S. authorities and supplied $51 million in help to media retailers in 2022, based on a press launch.
The Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Mission, an investigative media outlet that additionally distributes funds to media organizations across the globe, has been compelled to make main cutbacks. A spokesperson informed ICIJ that 29% of OCCRP’s 2025 operational funds has been frozen, or greater than $5 million, and that consequently it has laid off 20% of workers and instituted pay cuts, and that “nearly all grants have ended” to native and regional media organizations.
There are a number of court docket instances underway that problem the legality of the help freeze and the dismantling of USAID. On Feb. 7, a choose briefly blocked the Trump administration’s plans to put 2,200 USAID workers on depart. On Feb. 13, one other choose ordered the administration to revive overseas assist funding that was awarded previous to Trump’s inauguration. In that case, the choose wrote that the help freeze “set off a shock wave” within the growth sector, and that the Trump administration’s legal professionals had failed to elucidate why the freeze “was a rational precursor to reviewing [aid] packages.”
Now we’ve even much less cash and manpower to do the reporting that was extraordinary to do,
— Attila Biro, co-founder of Romanian outlet Context
Media teams are additionally organizing in response to the funding freeze. The International Discussion board for Media Improvement has drafted a “name to motion” aimed toward philanthropies, governments and worldwide establishments, urging them to safe emergency funding to deal with the media’s monetary disaster. The draft letter mentioned that current occasions “have severely destabilized the already precarious monetary, distribution, and security situations of many impartial journalism organizations.”
The draft letter additionally warned that the publication of details about the beneficiaries of media help packages has positioned in danger hundreds of journalists and human rights defenders who’ve been concerned in U.S.-supported tasks. Whereas the letter had been signed by greater than 70 media organizations, it mentioned that it could not disclose the signatories “as a consequence of safety issues.”
The State Division didn’t reply to a request for remark for this text. President Donald Trump has mentioned USAID was run by “radical left lunatics,” and on social media accused the group of funneling cash to media organizations “as a ‘payoff’ for creating good tales concerning the Democrats.” The White Home final week particularly cited USAID grants to OCCRP and to coach Sri Lankan journalists as examples of wasteful spending by the help company.
Some information retailers have already begun to put off workers and drastically reduce their reporting ambitions. It will imply much less protection of subjects that previous American administrations prioritized as a part of their efforts to advertise human rights and democracy overseas.
The Romanian outlet Context has investigated how disinformation shapes the nation’s politics. It developed synthetic intelligence-based instruments to research TikTok, and discovered an enormous initiative by the nation’s far-right to unfold conspiracy theories and Russian propaganda on the platform. Romania’s constitutional court docket finally nullified the nation’s final presidential election and ordered a brand new vote as a result of scale of the electoral manipulation, together with on TikTok.
The co-founder of Context, Attila Biro, mentioned that roughly 30% of the outlet’s funding got here from U.S. overseas help. With out these funds, he mentioned that Context doesn’t have the assets to cowl the upcoming election, which has been scheduled for Might.
“There’s threats of election interference from Russia and different actors,” mentioned Biro. “And now we’ve even much less cash and manpower to do the reporting that was extraordinary to do in any case.”
Ukrainian media, which has obtained substantial help from america, is more likely to be decimated by the help freeze. The International Discussion board for Media Improvement estimates that america accounted for 70% to 80% of all overseas media help to the nation. Mira Milosevic, the discussion board’s govt director, mentioned most native Ukrainian media retailers “haven’t any funds reserves, and infrequently survive month to month, making them notably susceptible.”
The Mykolaiv Middle for Investigative Reporting, which receives over half of its funding from U.S. overseas help, is predicated within the metropolis of Mykolaiv on the Black Sea and covers information in southern Ukraine. When the Russian military tried to grab the town in 2022, the middle’s reporters exhaustively catalogued the munitions used within the shelling of their metropolis and the buildings that had been destroyed. Later, they investigated the precise Russian navy models that had participated within the assault on Mykolaiv and the names of their commanders.
Along with alleged Russian battle crimes, the middle has targeted on Ukrainian corruption: A current investigation uncovered how Ukrainian officers had bought tens of hundreds of thousands of {dollars} in property exterior the nation for the reason that Russian invasion.
The extra we create failed states the world over, the extra unstable the world turns into,
— Golden Matonga, ICIJ member and director of investigations for a Malawi outlet
The help freeze casts doubt on the middle’s capacity to proceed this work, mentioned its founder Oleg Oganov. One worker has already give up, he mentioned, and he’s pondering whether or not he can exchange a few of the workers’s capabilities with synthetic intelligence within the occasion of additional resignations.
“Individuals had been shocked at first, after which realized that this turmoil — it’s out of their energy,” he mentioned. “They will do nothing, we are able to do nothing.”
Past the Ukrainian entrance strains, U.S.-funded media are typically the one investigative retailers in poor nations or fragile democracies. In Malawi, a nation of roughly 20 million those that ranks as one of many poorest nations on the earth, personal newspapers and radio stations are depending on a small pool of advertisers, mentioned Golden Matonga, the director of investigations for the Platform for Investigative Journalism and an ICIJ member.
These advertisers embody the federal government and some massive firms, he mentioned, which limits the media’s urge for food for investigating them. An investigative media outlet free from the necessity to increase promoting income, he mentioned, “can present that oxygen of data that can’t be managed by another locations.”
Malawi is scheduled to carry elections in September, and Matonga is apprehensive that his group won’t have the assets to report on points like election integrity or governmental corruption. He has already needed to cancel staff conferences twice as a result of lack of readability round their funding state of affairs, and he fears that the outlet could ultimately need to make drastic cutbacks or shut down as a result of freeze.
With out the examine that impartial media can present on his nation’s facilities of energy, he warns, corruption will unfold — each to the detriment of Malawi and america. “The extra we create failed states the world over, the extra unstable the world turns into,” he mentioned. “It’s important to understand that it’s within the U.S.’s personal curiosity to have a safer, safer and steady world.”
As of now, Matonga isn’t positive what to inform his workers. “You’re trying on the starvation they’ve, the power they’ve to do that job,” he mentioned. “However all that may go away with one electronic mail, with one pronouncement in [Washington] D.C. And that’s scary, that’s overwhelming for individuals like us.”
Replace Feb. 18, 2025: This story was up to date to replicate developments in court docket challenges.
Replace Feb. 14, 2025: This story was up to date to replicate the identify of the Mykolaiv Middle for Investigative Reporting in its Ukrainian spelling.
