"The Global Campaign for Media Freedom (GCMF) was launched in 2019 by the UK and Canadian governments. It includes a coalition of 37 countries seeking to promote media freedom, a High Level Panel of Legal Experts on Media Freedom and a Global Media Defence Fund, administered by UNESCO. The overarching goals of the GCMF are to: 1) shine a global spotlight on the issue of media freedom and 2) increase the costs for those who attack media freedom. This report assesses the extent to which the GCMF has achieved its first aim – to raise the profile of media freedom. It analyses online, English-language news coverage and social media commentary of media freedom generally, and the activities of the GCMF specifically, from July 2019 to July 2020. We find that:
1. In its first year, the GCMF has helped to shine a spotlight on media freedom, generating a significant amount of new, online, English-language news coverage and social media commentary. Notably, it generated more attention than most other international media freedom initiatives.
2. However, this spotlight was fleeting. Media attention was primarily focussed on the inaugural Global Media Freedom Conference in London in July 2019. The GCMF’s other initiatives generated very little online news coverage.
3. The GCMF did not appear to raise the profile of media freedom issues beyond its own campaign activities. For example, the campaign hashtag - #defendmediafreedom – was not used widely beyond the conference.
4. Media attention focused on well-known personalities associated with the campaign especially Amal Clooney and the United Kingdom’s Foreign Secretary (at the time) Jeremy Hunt.
5. Disappointingly, George Clooney was also frequently mentioned in online news stories about the Global Campaign for Media Freedom (25%) – more mentions than even Jamal Khashoggi or the United Nations - despite not being involved in the campaign." (Executive summary)