M20 Johannesburg Declaration urges global prioritisation of information integrity for the public good
Preamble
Global and local representatives of the media attending the M20 Summit convened in Johannesburg by the South African National Editors’ Forum and Media Monitoring Africa have come together during the 2025 South African presidency of the G20, to sound an acute alarm. We are responding to a moment of profound global crisis in the integrity of information, peace and respect for human rights, including environmental rights. We hereby alert our media colleagues, the G20 and the wider public: the crisis is intensifying as the spaces for independent news media and civic engagement contract.Our conviction is that independent journalism is a vital public good, and fundamental to people’s right of access to information and to the sustenance of peace and democratic governance.We affirm that information integrity is essential to sustaining democracy and advancing the G20’s 2025 goals of international solidarity, equality and sustainable development. Our call is an injunction to everyone to do more to protect press freedom, support the role of journalism, and a human rights-based media ecosystem in its contribution to the public good. We call for significant steps to ensure that independent journalism and media pluralism are strengthened and information integrity is secured. Inaction and “business-as-usual” will see current troubling trends not just persist but worsen.
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Click on the link below to view the Declaration:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/17PeyDQH1X7gid9ULVcAKK4MvwPniWLDWfuUY-TilkCY/edit?tab=t.0
