AGILE: 2025 in Review

Across many regions of the world, the space for independent journalism is shrinking. Journalists face growing repression, economic precarity, and rapid technological change, while democratic institutions are under increasing strain. Against this backdrop, the first year of the Advancing Global Innovation and Learning Effectively to Build Resilience in Independent Media (AGILE) project focused on a central question: how can journalism continue to serve the public interest amid hostility, uncertainty, and transformation?

This report documents AGILE’s first year of work across five interconnected workstreams, bringing together research, experimentation, capacity building, and policy engagement. From journalism in exile in Latin America, to AI-enabled inclusion tools in Central Asia, to leadership development for women journalists in Africa and Asia, the report shows how resilience must be understood as systemic, contextual, and deeply human.

One key area of focus is journalism in exile. As democratic backsliding accelerates, an increasing number of journalists are forced to leave their home countries to protect their lives and their work. Research supported by AGILE shows that exile has become a permanent feature of the regional media ecosystem in parts of Latin America, with profound consequences for information access, accountability, and democratic memory. In some contexts, exiled media now represent the last remaining source of independent reporting.

The report highlights that resilience is not only a matter of safety or technology, but also of sustainability and well-being. Journalists working in exile face complex legal, financial, psychosocial, and security challenges, often while trying to report across borders under conditions of surveillance and risk. AGILE’s findings underline that without a minimum level of individual stability, sustainable media organisations cannot exist.

Beyond exile journalism, the report explores how locally driven innovation can help overcome structural barriers to information access. In Central Asia, AGILE-supported initiatives demonstrate how AI tools, when shaped by journalists and civil society actors themselves, can expand linguistic inclusion, protect vulnerable communities, and counter shrinking civic space. These experiments show that technology, while often part of the problem, can also be part of the solution when grounded in local realities.

Economic resilience is another recurring theme. As traditional revenue models erode and international funding becomes more constrained, independent media must adapt without compromising their editorial integrity. Through AGILE’s Media Resilience Incubator, outlets across Latin America tested tailored strategies to diversify income, strengthen audience trust, and link financial sustainability directly to safety and independence.

The report also engages with the policy dimensions shaping journalism’s future. In an era of generative AI, AGILE-supported advocacy contributed to emerging international standards that place freedom of expression and media pluralism at the centre of AI governance debates—recognising that technological change must not further undermine the viability or democratic role of journalism.

Across regions and workstreams, a consistent message emerges: media resilience cannot be reduced to a single intervention. It depends on networks, supportive institutions, sustainable economic models, and investment in people. As AGILE moves into its next phase, this first-year review serves as both a record of learning and a call to strengthen the systems that allow journalism not just to survive, but to endure where democracy is under threat.