Organisers of World News Day have warned that news media must remain relevant or “society will struggle,” as more than 1,000 outlets worldwide joined a campaign on Monday to promote the role of journalism amid what they describe as an “existential threat” to the industry.
Participating organisations including the New York Times, Reuters, and the Kyiv Independent are publishing editorials, advertisements, and cartoons to underscore the importance of “trusted journalism.”
The push comes as global trust in news fell to a record low in 2026, according to the Reuters Institute’s Digital News Report, which found audiences increasingly turning to social media and AI chatbots for information.
Branko Brkic, co‑organiser of World News Day, said former rivals in the industry must now collaborate: “If we do not change the game, we are just not going to exist.”
Since its launch in 2018, World News Day has grown steadily, with its central message — “trusted journalism matters” — aimed at reinforcing the role of news providers in investigating and explaining critical events.
The Reuters Institute report noted rising “anxiety, disengagement, and cynicism” among audiences, but also openness to new formats and continued belief in journalism’s value when done well. Social media and video platforms overtook traditional outlets’ websites and apps as the main source of online news last year, though they remain less trusted.
A separate Ofcom study released earlier this month said UK audiences now consume news from a wider range of sources, with YouTube “growing rapidly” and 20% of people using AI tools to access news. But the regulator cautioned that greater choice has also created greater uncertainty about reliability, stressing that traditional outlets are still viewed as more trustworthy, accurate, and impartial than online platforms.
Branko Brkic, founder of South Africa’s Daily Maverick and co‑organiser of World News Day, acknowledged that the media environment has fundamentally changed and said 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 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 admitted that mainstream media has “committed mistakes,” but stressed 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.”
He noted that the definition of “truth” is often contested, citing US President Donald Trump’s long‑running attacks on what he calls the “fake news media.”
“This is the information‑based society,” Brkic added. “We are the infrastructure for that information‑based society. And that society is actually going to really struggle without us.”
