News media must stay relevant or 'society will struggle', says World News Day boss

News media must remain relevant or “society will struggle,” says World News Day boss

More than 1,000 news providers worldwide have signed on to back World News Day on Monday, an initiative designed to promote journalism’s role at a time when organisers say the industry is facing an “existential threat”.

Participating media outlets, including the New York Times, Reuters and the Kyiv Independent, are publishing editorials, ads and cartoons to underline the importance of “trusted journalism”.

According to the Reuters Institute’s latest Digital News Report, trust in news fell to a new global low in 2026, with the report noting that people are increasingly using social media and AI chatbots for news.

Branko Brkic, co-organiser of World News Day, said media organisations that were once competitors now need to cooperate, adding: “If we do not change the game, we are just not going to exist.”

World News Day has expanded since launching in 2018, and its message that “trusted journalism matters” is intended to emphasise the role of news providers in investigating and explaining significant events.

The campaign comes amid what the recent Reuters Institute report described as “anxiety, disengagement, and cynicism” toward news among the public, “but also openness to new sources and formats, and continued belief in what news at its best can offer”.

Social media and video networks overtook news organisations’ own websites and apps as the main source of online news last year, though the report said they are trusted less.

However, the report said that while choice has increased, so has uncertainty about who and what to believe, and Ofcom said traditional providers are still regarded as more trustworthy, accurate and impartial than online platforms.

Brkic, who founded South Africa’s Daily Maverick, said he accepts that the media landscape has changed and that established news organisations must adapt.

“The old days are not coming back. We need to form a new equilibrium, and the only way we can do it is that if we actually join forces,” he said.

“If we continue like this, we’re just going to be weak individual players waiting to be taken out. If we don’t change something pretty fundamentally and pretty urgently, we’re just going to be roadkill.”

Brkic said the mainstream media has “committed mistakes”, but that professional and reliable journalists remain essential to society.

“We need to talk to our audiences and explain to them, it’s not in your interest not to choose truth and trust,” he said.

“We cannot function without a thing called the truth, without facts.”

However, the meaning of “the truth” is often disputed, as shown by US President Donald Trump’s long-running fight with what he calls the “fake news media”.

Brkic added: “This is the information-based society. We are the infrastructure for that information-based society. And that society is actually going to really struggle without us.”