A group of independent newsrooms in Southeast Asia are calling for “radical collaboration” to address challenges faced by the news industry and the public information ecosystem on the internet.
The newsrooms, including Malaysiakini, urged other news groups, communities, and civil society to work together and find solutions that would enable independent public interest media to thrive.
“Only by working together and joining forces can we take back the internet for human thriving,” they said in a joint statement in conjunction with World Press Freedom Day today.
The call echoes Nobel Peace Prize laureate Maria Ressa’s keynote speech at the Global Investigative Journalism Conference in Kuala Lumpur last November, where she highlighted threats faced by the investigative reporting community and urged them to embrace radical collaboration to survive.
In their statement, the group said Big Tech companies have starved newsrooms of revenue by diverting their readers and harvesting their content without compensation.
At the same time, disinformation - especially when facilitated by artificial intelligence - has crowded out sources of credible information online.
“These challenges, together with other factors, have caused massive layoffs across the news industry, journalists to leave behind journalism, or news outlets to close shop,” they said.
Among others, the group called for transparent algorithms that would serve the information needs of the people, and building digital spaces that are “cured of the ills that now define the internet built by big tech platforms”.
The statement is reproduced in full below:
Manifesto for World Press Freedom Day:
‘Let’s build an internet where humans thrive’
When a crisis or conflict strikes, journalists and newsrooms go to the frontlines to bring people the information they need to make crucial decisions.
But journalists and media organisations all over the world are caught in a crisis, too. It is unfolding before our very eyes, but quietly, between the headlines of other calamities.
This World Press Freedom Day, we, independent news organisations, want to bring attention to seismic shifts in the digital space that’s choking the flow of verified information to the public and making it less likely for media outlets to survive.
First, big tech platforms where billions of people turn to for information and facts are deploying algorithms that hide information and facts.
When Meta deprioritised news content on Facebook users’ feeds, it made it more difficult for people to find journalism on Facebook. This harms media organisations because we are effectively cut off from our readers.
Second, the economic model for journalism has been destroyed by Big Tech’s monopolistic control over the digital landscape and audience data.
While parasitic AI scrapers extract journalistic content without compensating publishers, altered social media and search algorithms severely reduce news visibility and traffic.
These increase operational costs for already-precarious newsrooms while catalysing further catastrophic declines in revenue.
As of April 2026, over 76 percent of total worldwide digital advertising spend has been captured by Big Tech, with companies like Facebook and Google capturing the vast majority of digital advertising spend.
Third, the persistent rise of disinformation online, supercharged by AI deepfakes, has turned the internet into an ugly, toxic world.
This is bad for media organisations too, because the toxic sludge is crowding out the credible, high-quality information we put out, and making people second-guess everything they see online. Trust is dead on the internet.
These challenges, together with other factors, have caused massive layoffs across the news industry, journalists to leave behind journalism, or news outlets to close shop.
We need a digital space where facts and high-quality information are amplified, not buried. We need a space where people can find information without being fed AI slop or a barrage of disinformation.
We call for solutions that will enable independent public interest media to thrive and remain resilient in the face of monopolistic competition from Big Tech and authoritarian attacks.
We push for a space where algorithms are transparent and designed to serve the information needs of people, not the profit margins of tech companies.
We call on civic-minded citizens to work with us in building digital spaces cured of the ills that now define the internet, built by big tech platforms.
We call on other news groups, communities, and civic-minded organisations to embrace “radical collaboration.”
Only by working together and joining forces can we take back the internet for human thriving.
Signatories
Daily Guardian (Philippines)
Davao Today (Philippines)
Kiripost (Cambodia)
Mabuhay (Philippines)
Malaysiakini (Malaysia)
Mizzima Media (Myanmar)
Mountain Beacon (Philippines)
Palawan News (Philippines)
PressOne.PH (Philippines)
Rappler (Philippines)
SunStar Cebu (Philippines)
Tempo (Indonesia)
- Mkini
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