Pressed for funds

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reelance reporter Suwandi was excited when late last year, he received a reporting fellowship from Earth Journalism Network (EJN), a global environmental initiative and an arm of non-profit organization Internews. Established in 2004, the fellowship was aimed at helping journalists from low- and middle-income countries to pursue ambitious reporting projects. In the last two decades, it has produced countless journalism pieces on pressing issues such as climate and energy. 

The six-month fellowship was competitive. More than a dozen journalists from across Indonesia were selected to cover issues involving the country’s National Strategic Project (PSN) and received funding to cover reporting expenses. 

“I planned to cover the impacts of the National Strategic Project on conservation in Jambi (a coastal province in Sumatra),” Suwandi said. “The funding helped cover expenses that most media outlets can’t provide because they do not have the budget.”

But then just last January, EJN sent an email to the fellows, including Suwandi, saying that the fellowship was being halted because funding had been frozen.

“We are unable to draw down the funding for our work and must pause all our activities funded by U.S. government resources,” the email read. “This means you should stop any work you are doing on your story fellowship reporting until further notice.”

Internews had received funding from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and other bodies to support its efforts to promote access to information and independent media across the globe, from Ukraine to the Philippines. So when U.S. President Donald Trump put an indefinite pause to U.S. foreign aid in late January, activities by organizations like Internews were hit.

Indonesia itself has also been a steady recipient of U.S. aid, both for state programs and those run by nongovernment organizations. While the media has not been among the top 10 sectors in Indonesia receiving funding from USAID, several Indonesian non–profit media organizations  have benefited from the financial help extended by the U.S. aid agency for years. 

In many cases, these NGOs concentrated on issues often left by the wayside by Indonesia’s mainstream media, such as those concerning women, human rights, and the environment. Like many other NGOs worldwide that had been receiving USAID funding, however, many of these media nonprofits have now scaled down their operations or have shut down temporarily. 

“It’s a wake-up call that we should not rely only on foreign donors,” says Luviana Ariyanti, chief editor at Konde.co, an online publication focusing on women and the minority perspective. “It’s a reminder that we must do everything ourselves.”

But Ariyanti is well aware that it is easier said than done. The funding crisis also could not have come at a worse time in Indonesia, where unbiased coverage and analyses, as well as counter-narratives to challenge the powerful, have increasingly become scarcer. 

Championing in-depth content

In the last several years, Indonesia has been experiencing democratic backsliding as critics of the government come under attack even as the political elite gained more power. In the media sector alone, eight business conglomerates — with a wide range of interests that include banking and energy — own and control the major news outlets; these conglomerates are also politically well-connected. Newsrooms across Indonesia therefore have unwritten taboos against producing pieces that could hurt or undermine the business and political interests of the outlet’s owners. 

Those fairly freer to cover whatever issue they deem important for the public to know have seen themselves threatened. Just last March 19, for instance, a political journalist for the newsmagazine Tempo – known for its investigative stories — received a package containing a pig’s head. A few days later, headless rat carcasses turned up at the Tempo offices. 

The global media rights monitor Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has also noted that journalists covering local corruption in Indonesia experience intimidation by the police and the military, and are sometimes even arrested or subjected to physical violence. Those pursuing environmental stories are similarly threatened.

At the same time, says journalist and PhD candidate Sofie Syarief, with many Indonesians now turning online for news and entertainment, the race for clicks and views has led to a trend that “has mainly put an emphasis on virality rather than quality.” For many media outlets, this has meant shorter, more entertaining pieces, rather than in-depth investigative stories that are also costlier to produce. 

Indeed, the significant amount needed to complete his story had Suwandi stopping in his tracks after he received the EJN email. He tells Asia Democracy Chronicles (ADC): “I have been doing the reporting for my project since last year. But then the email came and there is no reason for me to continue reporting on this issue because it’s hard to do investigative reporting without financial support.”

It was also the high price tag of in-depth reports that had Konde.co entering into an agreement with USAID late last year for a six-month investigative journalism program for female journalists through workshops, discussions, and reporting fellowships. In 2021, the online publication also partnered with the U.S. aid agency for a year-long program. 

But the fund freeze has forced Konde.co to call off the new program. Says Ariyanti: “We have to be ready for any changes. Our plan that was agreed last year has gone awry. Of course the fund freeze impacts our plan, but we have to accept the situation.” 

Ways and means

The award-winning online platform was established in 2016 with the mission of becoming an independent, alternative media outlet that provides safe space for discussion on neglected issues. 

Konde.co has since become known for offering bold and fresh perspectives on various topics: from women involvement in elections to workers’ rights, to women’s role in environmental sustainability. 

Operating as a non-profit, it relies on a variety of funding sources, including donations, advertisement, donors, and partnership. According to Ariyanti, Konde.co’s total foreign funding — including the cancelled monies from USAID and those from a potential donor that she says is still thinking things over — could reach 50 percent of Konde.co’s total budget for 2025-2026 period. 

“Actually, we are not relying only on foreign donors,” says Ariyanti. “We also try accessing public funding through the government and do whatever we can to fund our operation.”

In the past few years, Konde.co has explored various methods to raise funds, including setting up a ‘walking room’ where it can partner with various organizations to publish books, holding offline events, and producing multimedia packages. 

Konde.co has also raised funds through Google ads, offering memberships, and selling merchandise through its Konde Lab initiative. But Ariyanti says that the Google ads so far cover only operational costs, like the electricity and Internet bills, while loyal subscribers to its membership program stood at only 80 people as of this March. 

Complicating matters is the fact that the U.S. fund freeze has also affected the global aid landscape, with donors from other countries now turning stricter and more cautious. Among these is Konde.co’s potential donor that Ariyanti says was already in discussion with them to fund a program when it decided that it needed more time to assess the situation. 

Remotivi, a center for media and communication studies, is also finding sourcing funds from other countries challenging. Members of the European Union, for example, are themselves facing financial pressure, especially with the ongoing conflict in Ukraine.  

With the shift in political ideology filled with right-wing populism, some countries in Europe have also been reluctant to fund progressive agenda. Says Remotivi Stakeholder Relations Leader Bhena Geerushtia: “The pond [to look for funding] is getting smaller. And we have to carefully examine how political ideologies in developed countries have changed.”

Remotivi had tried raising funds through other means such as donations. But Geerushtia admits that these were not managed well. And so when USAID shut down, so did Remotivi. It is still hoping that its closure is temporary.

“We didn’t have any other funding outside of foreign donor (USAID) to carry out our current program,” says Geerushtia.   

“[But] we are not going to back down. We still want to fight because we think there is still a lot of work to do.”

Aid recipients ‘paid hacks’?

Founded in 2010, the non-profit Remotivi aims to provide the public with research and articles on progressive ideas and counter-narratives on media and communication to challenge mainstream perspectives and narratives often controlled by the government. 

Last year, Remotivi signed an agreement with Internews to conduct advocacy campaigns on Indonesia’s controversial Broadcasting Bill and a ministerial decree on content censorship issued by the Ministry of Communications and Digital Affairs. These campaigns have now been shelved.

There have been, of course, allegations that media organizations receiving funds from USAID were merely pushing Washington’s agenda, or worse, were mere tools of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. But many of these organizations have pushed back, saying that all they received from USAID was money, not instructions on how to do their reports.

In a recent statement urging the resumption of funding from USAID,  the Board of Directors of the Global Investigative Journalism Network (GIJN) said, “Our member organizations have shown repeatedly that their reporting has been independent and has come under no pressure from USAID officials or staff — and the results of their investigations show that they report without fear or favor.”

Miranda Patrucic, chief editor at the Amsterdam-based Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), also told the Belgian publication Knack that her organization had “never received any kind of specific funding to do a particular story on any topic, and we have never received any instruction or guidance from our donors. Most of the U.S. money has always been used for training and development of reporters.”

But she also said in the Knack interview last February: “Any donor, any foundation, everybody has an interest. Spreading democracy around the world was a core policy of previous U.S. administrations. And for that, journalism and independent media are crucial.”

“For the U.S.,” Patrucic continued, “there obviously was an interest for corruption to be reported; Russia is also paying all kinds of actors around the world. The question is: which side do you choose? As an editor-in-chief, as long as I have funding to do any story I want, I’m happy to take that funding if it is coming from a source that is promoting democracy. The bottom line is: somebody needs to pay for journalism if you want democracy to survive.” ◉

Adi Renaldi is a freelance journalist based in Jakarta.