Science Journalism on the Ropes Worldwide : Shared by John Gilmartin

I think XUNICEF may be interested. This piece focuses on the collateral damage of USAID cuts, which now impact journalism that reports on environmental and health research news. 

I remember being part of the field office group supporting a BBC team reporting on how a polio national immunization day works on the ground in several parts of India. It was fun to advise a senior person in state level health ministry that a BBC TV team wanted to interview him/her for the upcoming BBC special broadcast. We never got a 'no' to one of those requests, and the result was usually a very engaged ministry in the next big day. When we recruited Cricket stars and Bollywood actors to join the tours, that had dramatic impact.

John Gilmartin

Science Journalism on the Ropes Worldwide as US Aid Cuts Bite 

Ben Deighton Nature February 19, 2026 Click here for the article

The closure of USAID and the broader freeze on US foreign assistance are devastating the infrastructure of science and investigative journalism worldwide, particularly in lower-income countries. USAID had been the world's largest funder of international development and a significant source of grants for science-based reporting. Its closure in July 2025 triggered a cascade of secondary effects, as philanthropic foundations that had relied on the US aid ecosystem scrambled to cover funding gaps elsewhere.

Internews, one of the largest non-profit media support organizations, lost 95% of its 2025 US government allocation of $126 million. InfoNile, a journalism network supporting cross-border environmental investigations across the Nile Basin, saw its budget fall from $300,000 in 2024 to under $230,000 in 2025, and is now down to a single international funding partner. The Earth Journalism Network, which enables journalists from low- and middle-income countries to attend major UN events, lost between one-quarter and one-third of its $9 million 2024 budget after five or six US federal grants were halted and then terminated. Philanthropic grants for journalism covering science, health, and environment had already been declining — from $86.5 million in 2021 to $63 million in 2023 — even before the USAID freeze took effect.

"If you look at the geopolitical situation today, I think science is critical — but a lot of that coverage is disappearing at the exact moment it's needed." — Marius Dragomir, Director, Media and Journalism Research Center, Tallinn

"We used to fund journalists to go deep into rainforests in Congo, into parts of Rwanda — but now we have no money. You don't get stories about logging, about who is cutting the trees." — Fredrick Mugira, Co-founder, InfoNile

"Journalism is falling down the list." — Meaghan Parker, Executive Director, Council for the Advancement of Science Writing