"The below principles seek to reinvigorate international support to media and the information environment. They aspire to encourage current development co-operation providers to increase levels of financial and other forms of assistance and to improve the relevance and effectiveness of their existing support to preserve, protect, and promote public interest media and information integrity. Official development assistance (ODA) can be essential to address the major challenges facing the global information environment. The principles presented here may guide development co-operation providers’ endeavours to respond to the challenges laid out in the preamble. The principles are supported by a non-exhaustive, indicative list of practical, concrete ways to operationalise each principle. The first principle on ‘do no harm to public interest media’, is intended as a minimum standard which all development co-operation providers are expected to respect. The other principles are more ambitious, seeking to function as a guide and an inspiration to development co-operation providers to increase the relevance and effectiveness of their support.
1. Ensure that assistance does no harm to public interest media [...]
2. Increase financial and other forms of support to public interest media and the information environment, in order to strengthen democratic resilience [...]
3. Take a whole of system perspective on supporting the media and information environment to make support more relevant, effective and sustainable. Consider the media and information environment as a development sector in itself, a critical part of efforts to promote and protect democracy, human rights, gender equality and development as well as a sector which can support implementation of other development goals [...]
4. Strengthen local leadership and ownership, empowering media partners as well as other actors in the information environment such as civil society organisations and online content creators to meaningfully participate in policies and programmes [...]
5. Improve co-ordination of support to the media and information environment, both among donor agencies and between development and diplomatic efforts to support media freedom, especially in contexts of crisis [...]
6. Invest in knowledge, research, and learning [...]" (Page 8-11)

"This document puts forward principles which set out what relevant and effective support to media and the information environment might look like. The target audience for these principles is primarily development actors within the DAC, whose 32 members include many of the world’s largest providers of official development assistance (ODA). In addition, it addresses media support practitioners and organisations, local media outlets, national governments, parliaments, political parties, international policy makers, private foundations and investors, and other stakeholders engaged in the future of media and media support. The principles derive from and respond to consultations conducted by the Global Forum for Media Development (GFMD) and the Center for International Media Assistance (CIMA), which between December 2021 and June 2022 gathered input from representatives from bilateral donor agencies, implementing organisations, civil society groups, and media development experts via nearly 200 in-person and online discussions. In November 2022, the DAC Network on Governance agreed to develop new principles, recognising a need to ensure that the international response to the crisis in the media sector fits better in a rapidly changing information environment. That same month, the intergovernmental Council of UNESCO’s International Program for the Development of Communication (IPDC) also welcomed the process for developing such principles (UNESCO, 2022). This document captures that intent." (Page 2)