Giving a voice to the voiceless
This proximity to locals enables community media to be more than just a platform for sharing information. They can amplify local voices, including those of youth, women, and marginalised groups. They can promote inclusivity and representation, and they can often directly influence local affairs.
Campji, for example, is committed to changing the narrative about refugees in Lebanon. “We strive to showcase their unique contributions and initiatives, helping to break the prevailing stereotypes,” explain team members. The organisation has direct access to refugee camps that often cannot be reached by more traditional media.
This ability to fill information gaps is a powerful tool for many community media outlets.
Long-term sustainability and other challenges
Community media face many of the same challenges as other independent media in the region, including fear of censorship, legal harassment, and shadow-banning on social media. Those operating in restrictive and/or politically sensitive environments explain that they face a lack of legal mechanisms to protect journalists.
Economic sustainability is a particular concern. Limited financial resources make it difficult to access proper equipment, affect their ability to regularly produce content, and mean they are overly reliant on volunteers. According to Campji, this “limits the media’s ability to seek legal and technical support and institutionalise their work.”
EED core support has provided a much-needed source of stability to community media in highly volatile contexts, which allows for higher-quality journalistic output. It has empowered marginalised groups, including refugees, to fully own and operate their own outlets, allowing them to amplify their voices and narratives beyond stereotypes and superficial news coverage.
“EED gave us the ability to remunerate our staff, who were then able to fully focus on their reporting job,” says EED’s Syrian partner. “Without this support, we would have had to stop working.”
For security reasons, some partners are not named in this article