Time to fight

IN my life I have watched communities, organisations, and entire countries lose their grip on truth.

I was just starting my book publishing career in Yugoslavia in the mid-80s when the shared facts that held our society together for 40 years came apart, piece by piece, until people could no longer agree on what our country stood for, on its basic values and, finally, what was actually happening.

Hundreds of thousands event­ually died. Millions were displaced. Individual lives were ruined. Commu­nities were left devastated, with shards of inhumanity and hurt that were bound to self-regenerate for generations.

Decades later, in South Africa, I was part of the opposite movement: a group of dogged journalists digging through the wreckage of state capture, one document at a time, until the theft could no longer be denied. That fundamental work was the very spark that helped pull the country back into hope and, ever so briefly, even optimism.

Those two experiences taught me the same lesson from opposite directions. A society that loses its grip on facts loses its grip on itself. A society that fights for truth can still find its way back.

That is what World News Day stands for, and why on Sept 28 more than a thousand newsrooms from over a hundred countries will mark it together.

World News Day exists so we can strongly express our belief that reliable information is the infrastructure of our modern, information-based society. Like water or electricity, it is fundamental to our existence and yet nobody thinks about it until it isn’t there, or it’s been replaced by something that looks like news but isn’t.

Sharing the medium with propaganda outfits and disinformation trolls is one of the great structural weak poi­nts of our entire edifice. Our reports, analyses and investigations travel along the same distribution channels as some of the worst perpetrators of hatred and madness ever to see the face of the Earth.

And yet, and yet, we persist. We are still here, because it is our mission, our motivating force, to be on your side no matter what.

We will always help you know the facts.

They don’t arrive on their own. We have to go and get the facts: read the document, find the witness, check the claims twice, protect sources (who are the ones taking a real risk), ask the questions the powerful people don’t want asked, and then ask them again when they dodge them. We are here to put our name on what we publish and correct it in public if we get it wrong. Algorithmic speed is not the same as truth, and neither is confidence.

We will make sure you understand what matters.

A data point on its own only tells you that something happened. A flood level, a budget line, a vote count. Journalism’s job is to explain why something happened, who benefited, who paid, and what is likely to come next. The context is often the difference between information and journalism. Information can fill any number of feeds at blinding speed. Journalism has to make sense of the world.

It is crucial to choose trusted journalism.

This is not a request to trust every newsroom, or to stop asking hard questions of us. Trust is earned over a lifetime, and it has to be re-energised with every new story.

I told my guys at Daily Maverick way too many times that we’re only as good as our latest story. But we invite you, the reader, to look out for reporting that shows where its information came from, that separates news from opinion, that admits when it doesn’t know something yet, and that corrects itself when it’s wrong. A trustworthy newsroom isn’t one that never makes mistakes. It’s one you can watch making them right.

We owe you the same standard we’re asking you to apply. So on this 2026 World News Day, we’re not just going to tell you that our journalism matters. We’re going to show you and tell you about the work: the months behind an investigation, the checking behind a breaking story, the correction that made the record more accurate, the local report that actually changed the lived reality of a community.

Alone, any one of us can be dismissed. In many countries we’re being sued into silence, driven into penury or simply ignored. Still, together, in dozens of languages and more than a hundred countries, we’re harder to ignore. That’s the whole point of doing this on the same day. This is not a fundraiser. This is a rallying point.

And here is the fourth thing, the one that drives it all: it’s your right to know.

Not a favour handed down by a government or a company that decides what you’re allowed to see. It is your true birth right.

World News Day falls on September 28 for a reason: it’s also the UN’s International Day for Universal Access to Information. That’s not a coincidence we’re borrowing for effect. It’s the same idea, seen from two end points.

Your right to know is only real if someone is doing the work of making information easy to find, check and, above all, true. That’s the job.

So before you share something juicy, pause. Before you believe something, ask how the person telling you knows it. Support the reporting that does this work in the open, and push back on the kind that doesn’t.

These have never mattered more: Know the facts. Understand what matters. Choose trusted journalism. Because it’s your right to know.

And because a world that stops knowing will never be free — just easier to fool. See you in the trenches.

The writer is the founder of Project Kontinuum, an alliance of people working to return journalism to its role as an essential service. This opinion piece was commissioned as part of the World News Day campaign highlighting the essential role of journalism in providing facts and clarity.

Published in Dawn, September 28th, 2026