The crisis behind the crises: why protecting access to information belongs in every funder’s strategy

From climate to conflict, solving society’s greatest challenges depends on a shared understanding of facts. Protecting information integrity needs to be at the heart of philanthropy.

For the first time in more than fifty years, there are more autocracies in the world than democracies. Three out of four people on the planet now live under autocratic regimes, experiencing an all too familiar playbook of fear, including the scapegoating of vulnerable communities, the erosion of civic space and the silencing of journalism and civil society.

Meanwhile, those living in democracies are losing faith in the institutions meant to serve them. The Reuters Institute’s 2026 Digital News Report found that trust in news has fallen to an all time low to just 37% globally, with more than half of people now actively avoiding the news at least some of the time. Across both democracies and autocracies, technology is being weaponised for the wide-scale manipulation of public information and opinion.

The result is a global crisis of trust, in which our shared understanding of facts is fracturing. For those tackling the climate crisis, for example, this means engaging with a growing number of people who no longer believe the science. For those focused on health, it has already produced a misinformation-fueled decline in vaccine uptake. For organisations working on equality and social justice, false information is driving polarised debates as 70% of people are unwilling to trust someone who has different values or cultural background.

This is why information integrity is not one crisis among many but the building block on which solving every other great challenge of our time depends. And it is why philanthropy must consider it central to its strategy.

But what does supporting information integrity actually look like in practice? It is broader than many assume. It means investing in practical support for independent media, so that journalists can continue to expose corruption and hold power to account. It means providing legal protection for reporters and civil society organisations facing an increasingly weaponised legal environment; in a recent survey of our TrustLaw network, 50% of civil society organisations reported increasing legal needs, with 36% citing stricter laws targeting civil society as the primary driver. And it means supporting the infrastructure of transparency itself, like the data and the platforms that allow citizens, investors and policymakers to make decisions grounded in evidence.

In partnership with the Global Fund, our team at the Thomson Reuters Foundation have supported journalists and civil society leaders to tackle health misinformation in traditionally marginalised communities. One journalist we supported said: “One of my biggest fears when it comes to executing stories is how to get legal backing if I come to a crossroad with an institution or individual I write about.” She has seen firsthand how accurate reporting reduces “the panic or tension that can arise from false or misleading reports”, but producing it requires more than editorial skill. “The support made me more confident in pursuing high-risk investigations while ensuring accuracy, fairness, and legal compliance.” Protecting information integrity means protecting the people who produce it by equipping them not only with the skills to tell the stories that matter, but with the legal and operational backing to tell them safely.

For philanthropists, this is not a call to shift away from your existing priorities, but to recognise the value of information integrity to your work. Shared truths are what allow us to debate hard questions, make sound decisions and hold power to account. Facts bind free societies together. If we protect facts, we protect democracy.