RNW Media, Nieuwe Havenweg 51-H, Hilversum (2026)

18/05/2026

Tomorrow, our colleagues Surabhi and Sana will be representing RNW Media at the GDC Europe Forum 2026 in Prague!

The forum is organized by the European Democracy Youth Network, in collaboration with the Global Democracy Coalition, and is part of the GDC Regional Forums 2026, sponsored by the Kettering Foundation.

Surabhi will also be taking the stage as a panelist on Panel II – Campaigning in the Age of AI, exploring how disinformation and hybrid influence operations are transforming campaigns, voter behaviour, and trust in political institutions — with lessons drawn from recent and upcoming European elections.

Sharing the stage with her are:
🔹 Aleksandar Mijailović (European Democracy Youth Network Serbia, Lawyer & Civic Activist)
🔹 Dr. Anthony DeMattee, Ph.D. (Data Scientist, The Carter Center Democracy Program)
🔹 Rasto Kuzel (Head of MEMO 98, media & elections expert)

These are conversations that sit at the heart of our work at RNW Media — We look forward to some insightful conversations and to sharing our learnings from the forum with you later this week. Stay tuned!

15/05/2026

What does it mean when the conferences we hold to defend our rights become targets of the very forces we gather to resist? That's the question at the heart of a sharp new op-ed on RNW Media by Luckson Mulako Sikananu & Giovana Fleck — published the same day Zambia's Parliament passed the Public Gatherings Bill 2026.

💬 "The cancellation of the 2026 edition of RightsCon did not occur in isolation. It is one incident in a long and well-documented pattern of governments around the world effectively narrowing the conditions under which civil society can operate, and doing so with language carefully designed to appear reasonable."

The piece ends with a challenge the movement cannot ignore: there is no safe geography. Only the difficult work of building enough insulation — political, legal, diplomatic — to make these spaces harder to erase.

🔗 Read the full op-ed: https://ow.ly/mCaZ50YYQGE

13/05/2026

We signed. And here's why it matters.

RNW Media is proud to stand with hundreds of civil society, media and cultural organisations across Europe — and beyond — in calling on EU institutions to strengthen the financial backbone of in the next Multiannual Financial Framework 2028-2034.

The numbers tell a stark story:
📉 €7 billion decline in journalism revenues across Europe between 2019 and 2023
📰 Two-thirds of Europeans pay nothing for news — while newsroom jobs keep shrinking
🚨 85% of civil society organisations working on fundamental rights fear funding shortages threaten their very existence
✅ Only 7% of Creative Europe Culture proposals were funded in the last call

Meanwhile, authoritarian actors are not standing still. Russia alone allocated the equivalent of €1.4 billion to state media in 2021 — with further increases since. The information space is a battlefield, and independent media is on the frontline.

AgoraEU is not a cultural nice-to-have. It is democratic infrastructure.

As an organisation working at the intersection of media freedom, information integrity and democratic resilience — including in some of the world's most repressive media environments — RNW Media knows firsthand what happens when independent voices go dark. We cannot let that happen in Europe or anywhere else in the world.

We call on and to ensure the final AgoraEU envelope matches the scale of the challenge. We also urge the Council to direct decommitted funds from the Rule of Law Conditionality Mechanism back into programmes that defend the values they were withheld to protect.

To our Dutch colleagues in the European Parliament — including and — your voice in these negotiations matters. We stand ready to engage.

And to and the Commission team driving Tech Sovereignty and Democracy: AgoraEU is where those commitments meet reality. Let's fund it accordingly.

12/05/2026

Disinformation doesn't stop at borders. Electoral interference doesn't respect national jurisdictions. And yet — our responses to these threats remain fragmented, nationally anchored, and often one step behind. This is the central tension that the Global Democracy Coalition's Europe Pre-Forum Webinar will tackle head-on tomorrow, and RNW Media is proud to have Giovana Fleck, our Media Innovation Manager for Information Integrity, joining the conversation.

Giovana works at the intersection of technology and human rights — researching digital policy, narrative manipulation, and disinformation, and building healthier information ecosystems across the regions where RNW Media works. She leads our information integrity portfolio and brings a sharp, practice-grounded perspective to questions that are too often left in the realm of theory.

Alongside an exceptional group of experts — including voices from International IDEA, Democracy Reporting International, and the International Anti-Corruption Academy — Giovana will explore:
🔹 Why cross-border democratic threats continue to outpace coordinated responses
🔹 Where structural barriers to collaboration exist across governments, civil society, and the private sector
🔹 What meaningful democratic resilience looks like when disinformation and digital manipulation operate without boundaries

📅 Wednesday, May 13, 2026 | 3:00 PM CET / 9:00 AM ET💻 Online via Zoom — livestreamed on the GDC YouTube channel 🔗 Register via https://ow.ly/JJgQ50YXWLH

If you care about the future of democracy in Europe — and the global infrastructure needed to protect it — this is a conversation worth showing up for.

07/05/2026

Luckson Mulako Sikananu now lives in Amsterdam, but his mind keeps going home — to Lusaka, Zambia. Zambia goes to the polls this year. And like so many countries in the Global South, the biggest threats to democratic participation won't make the headline — they'll show up in the everyday. In this powerful op-ed he challenges one of journalism's quiet failures: treating elections as though they are democracy itself.

💬 "Democracy is not a moment, it is a set of conditions, institutions, and norms that determine whether those in power are held accountable, whether citizens can participate freely and meaningfully, and whether the outcomes of elections translate into governance that reflects public interest and serves people."

Real democratic reporting asks harder questions. It traces the line from a conflict in the Gulf to a price hike in Lusaka. It interrogates political slogans instead of amplifying them. It refuses to let the ballot be the beginning and the end of the story.
Because democracy is not won or lost on election day alone. It is built — or eroded — in the conditions that surround it.

📖 Read the full essay https://ow.ly/Vqk650YVXXU

07/05/2026

[EN]

As we celebrate World Press Freedom Month throughout May, at RNW Media and RNTC Media Training Centre, we also look at media freedom in relation to sustainability.

Our Digital Transformation Assessment (DTA) is a free tool to help public interest media organisations strengthen their digital strategy and long-term viability, enabling them to continue to do their work, freely and backed by a solid strategy and insightful data points.

🎯 Complete it before 8 May to access a free expert validation of your results.

👉 https://lnkd.in/ehQB_Nrm

[FR]

Tout au long du mois de mai, RNW Media et RNTC marquent le Mois Mondial de la Liberté de la Presse et se penchent sur la question de la liberté des médias et de sa durabilité.

Notre outil gratuit d'évaluation de la transformation numérique DTA aide les médias d'intérêt public à renforcer leur stratégie numérique et leur viabilité à long terme, leur permettant ainsi de poursuivre leur mission en toute liberté, forts d'une stratégie solide et de données pertinentes.

🎯 Complétez l'evaluation avant le 8 mai pour bénéficier d'une validation gratuite de vos résultats par des experts.

👉 https://lnkd.in/ehQB_Nrm

[AR]

بينما نحتفي بشهر حرية الصحافة العالمي طوال شهر مايو، نتناول في إذاعة هولندا العالمية للإعلام (RNW Media) ومركزنا للتدريب الإعلامي (RNTC) حرية الإعلام وعلاقتها بالاستدامة.

يُعدّ تقييم التحوّل الرقمي أداةً مجانيةً لمساعدة مؤسسات الإعلام المعنية بالمصلحة العامة على تعزيز استراتيجيتها الرقمية وضمان استدامتها على المدى الطويل، مما يُمكّنها من مواصلة عملها بحرية، مدعومةً باستراتيجية متينة وبيانات قيّمة.

🎯 أكمل التقييم قبل 8 مايو للحصول على فحص لنتائجك من خبير متخصص مجانًا.

👉https://lnkd.in/ehQB_Nrm

06/05/2026

Our colleagues Surabhi Srivastava and Noyan Er represented RNW Media and RNTC Media Training Centre today at the brilliant one-day 'Local News Matters Conference: New Pathways for Sustainability and Community-Powered Journalism', organised by the amazing team at the Media Diversity Institute Global in Brussels!

We checked in with our colleagues to get their quick and key takeaways from the conference. Here's what they had to say!

Noyan "I was inspired by the discussion that local news should be community-first, and not just audience first. Moreover, it should also be chronological, meaning, that before journalists and local news media outlets assume public interest in one topic or another, it is always best to start with honest conversations with communities first to assess their needs and issues that impact their daily life."

Surabhi "I think the media and journalism space is also struggling with this binary of whether we focus on doing good journalism OR focus on the business of doing good journalism. The conference today had an interesting debate on this, and what I took away from that was the idea that it doesn't need to be a binary - an either/or. We need both - good journalism, but also good business sense for being able to do and sustain good journalism".

03/05/2026

“The moment we no longer have a free press, anything can happen. What makes it possible for a totalitarian or any other dictatorship to rule is that people are not informed. … If everybody always lies to you, the consequence is not that you believe the lies, but rather that nobody believes anything any longer.” — Hannah Arendt

On World Press Freedom Day, RNW Media and RNTC Media Training Centre bring you a collection of essays from , , and that examine the state of media and press freedom across diverse contexts and intersections. Together, they convey a shared urgency: press freedom is under threat, freedom of expression is shrinking — both online and offline — and media’s essential role in informing people, advancing public good and holding power to account is being undermined.

These essays make one thing clear: in a rapidly digitising and AI-driven media environment, defending press freedom requires more than protecting journalists alone. It requires confronting disinformation, resisting online censorship and repression, and ensuring that technological transformation strengthens, rather than weakens, access to credible information, safety of journalists and media-makers, and an inclusive public dialogue.

This philosophy also guides our work on digital transformation and media viability, through our Digital Transformation Assessment (DTA) which is a safe, confidential and free tool that help public interest media organisations understand where they stand today in their digital transformation journey - while contributing to collective insight that strengthens the sector.
Curious to learn more?

💡 Take the DTA (free):
https://rntc.com/digital

World Press Freedom Day is not only a moment to recognise that journalists and media-makers are working under immense pressure and threats globally, but also a call to protect the very conditions that make truth, accountability, and an inclusive public discourse possible.

🔗 Link to essay : www.rnw.media

Thank you Juan Robin, Retyan Sekar Nurani, Sam Moseti Nyamwange, and Armen Sargsyan for contributing your time, reflections, and insigts to highlight the state of press fr

30/04/2026

We're hiring! We have two exciting job opportunities at RNW Media
We're looking for two passionate professionals to join our team in Amsterdam and help shape the future of public interest media ecosystem worldwide.

1. Partnerships & Program Development Manager – EuropeLead RNW Media's programme portfolio and strategic partnerships across Europe. You'll work with media organisations, EU institutions, and civil society to drive impact in media viability and information integrity.

📅 Deadline: May 14, 2026 https://www.rnw.media/index.php/jobs/partnerships-program-development-manager-europe/

2. Senior Strategic Partnerships Manager A senior role at the heart of our fundraising strategy. You'll co-chair our Fundraising Team, manage our donor pipeline, and lead engagement with key institutional partners including the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

📅 Deadline: May 14, 2026 https://www.rnw.media/index.php/jobs/senior-strategic-partnerships-manager/

Both roles are full-time, hybrid/Amsterdam, and open to candidates already based in the Netherlands.
If you believe in the power of independent media to defend human rights and freedom of expression — we'd love to hear from you.

Send your application to : [email protected]

30/04/2026

We are deeply saddened to hear that RightsCon will not proceed in Zambia or online this year. This summit is a vital space for civil society, journalists, and activists to connect and advocate for a free and open digital future.

RNW Media and RNTC stand in full solidarity with the RightsCon team and the entire community during this challenging time. Our commitment to supporting digital rights and the safety of activists remains unwavering.

Stay strong, stay connected. ✊🌐

RNW Media

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