JX Fund – European Fund for Journalism in Exile

Exiled media across the world operate under conditions that fundamentally shape how their impact unfolds. Their newsrooms are often scattered across countries and time zones; their audiences are fragmented between those still inside the country and those who have left; their reporting must navigate censorship, surveillance, and the constant risk faced by sources on the ground. Distribution channels can disappear overnight, and monetization is constrained by both legal and technical barriers. And yet, despite these constraints, exiled media continue to have impact – often in ways that are more diverse than conventional metrics suggest.

To better understand these dynamics, we convened discussions at the Exile Media Forum 2025 in Hamburg and in a closed session at the International Journalism Festival 2026 in Perugia. Together with representatives of exiled media from all over the world, we moved beyond a narrow focus on reach toward a broader perspective: one in which impact is not a single outcome, but a set of interconnected dimensions that range from immediate, tangible change to long-term societal effects. To give a clearer sense of the complexities of impact and the perspectives shaping the community, we draw on insights from these conversations.

One takeaway from these discussions is that defining impact often begins by clarifying what it is not. The following sections build on this approach, highlighting common misconceptions and the clarifications that emerged through our exchanges.

Exiled media are not responsible for regime change.

For many journalists working in exile, the question of impact begins with a clarification: it is not their role to bring down governments or prosecute wrongdoing. Their work is grounded in making realities visible, accessible, and verifiable.

“As journalists, we need to be very careful about how to define impact. At Kloop, we investigate high-level corruption cases and criminal schemes. But do we aim to oust politicians or put someone behind bars? The answer is ‘No’ – our mission as journalists is to report about what’s going on.”

–      Rinat Tuhvatshin, co-founder of Kloop | Exiled media outlet from Kyrgyzstan

This understanding does not diminish impact – it reinforces the role of independent media.

Impact can take many forms. It can be immediate, as when reporting leads to a concrete problem being addressed. It can be delayed, as in the documentation of abuses that may only lead to justice years later. And it can be subtle or invisible: a shift in perception, a sense of connection, the knowledge that one is not alone.

“For a discussion about what impact is, we probably first need to understand what it isn’t. It is not our job to take down Putin or Lukashenko. But last year, for example, we had a story about the head of a university who had created a little dictatorship of his own. He was recently removed from his position – and although I don’t want to take all the credit, we probably contributed to that. What we need to understand is that the social is political.”

–     Exiled media outlet from Russia

This distinction – between directly causing change and enabling it – runs through many of the examples that follow.

Yet, independent reporting can enable direct change.

In some cases, exiled media reporting leads to direct, tangible outcomes. These rarely take the form of systemic political change, but they can have immediate consequences in people’s everyday lives.

The Azerbaijani outlet Meydan TV illustrates this through its project Your Voice, which invited audiences to submit local problems directly to the newsroom. Through follow up reporting, around 160 issues – from broken infrastructure to administrative failures – were addressed.

“This is real ‘Citizen Journalism’. Even with no people on the ground, we were able to help people and to build meaningful connections to our audience at the same time.”

–      Orkhan Mammad, editor-in-chief of Meydan TV | Exiled media outlet from Azerbaijan

In Kyrgyzstan, Kloop’s investigations exposed fraud schemes and abuses that harmed ordinary people, including cases where taxes were wrongly assigned to citizens and vendors were forcibly displaced. As a result, authorities corrected some of these actions by collecting taxes from the real perpetrators and negotiating with market sellers, eventually agreeing to allocate land for them to build their own market.

El Toque from Cuba created an AI-powered exchange rate tracker based on informal market data, which became widely adopted by Cuban businesses and individuals to price goods more realistically than the government’s fixed rate. By filling a critical information gap, the project not only helped people navigate daily economic decisions but also challenged the state’s control over economic narratives.

Taken together, these examples show how exiled media can operate simultaneously as watchdogs, facilitators of civic action, and spaces of social connection. Their impact is not only reflected in institutional accountability, but also in the everyday relationships and forms of solidarity they help sustain.

Impact and reach are not the same.

Sometimes, impact is reduced to audience reach – but impact is not the same as reach. While the exiled media communities we observe do continue to reach millions of people in their home countries, audience size alone reveals only a small part of the picture. In many cases, even measuring that reach is difficult. When accessing independent reporting is restricted or illegal, conventional metrics become unreliable or incomplete.

Instead, reach often becomes visible in indirect ways. At Dasheng Media, for example, impact reveals itself through patterns of circulation rather than analytics. As one editor described, audiences screen-record and re-upload their reporting across platforms, extending its life cycle until it is taken down again. Each re-upload becomes both an act of distribution and a signal of relevance:

“Impact is often invisible, because China is a black box and it’s very hard to measure how many people we are reaching. But people are recording our content and upload it on available platforms until it gets deleted again, so we know that there are people who echo what we share, and that our content is important for communities both inside and outside China.”

–      Dasheng Media | Independent media outlet from China based in the U.S.

In other contexts, the very act of reaching an audience requires extraordinary effort. In Afghanistan, where access to the internet can be severely limited, even sharing information can involve significant personal risk:

“A female teacher who worked in a remote area of Afghanistan before the Taliban came to power lost her job afterward. She now organizes protest activities with women in her community. Since there is no internet access in the village, she sometimes walks for about an hour and a half—sometimes with her child, sometimes alone—to reach the mountains where she can access the internet. She then sends me videos and materials that she and other village women have recorded in protest against Taliban rule, so that I can publish them through the Rukhshana media.”

–      Zahra Joya, founder and editor-in-chief of Rukhshana Media | Exiled media outlet from Afghanistan

Finally, impact can be understood as the creation of reciprocal relationships with readers – especially in contexts where audiences themselves are under pressure:

“70% of our audience is inside Russia, 30% outside. We wanted them to see and support each other. So we invited readers inside Russia to write about why Meduza matters to them. We published these letters anonymously under flower nicknames. Readers outside Russia could then read the letters and support the ones they connected with. The idea was inspired by the Italian tradition of the ‘suspended coffee’ – buying an extra coffee for someone who can’t afford one.”

–      Galina Timchenko, co-founder and publisher of Meduza | Exiled media outlet from Russia

For audiences living under repression, access to independent information – and the knowledge that others are reading it too – can reduce isolation and sustain a sense of shared reality despite propaganda and repression.

Sustaining journalism and constant innovation are impact.

For outlets working in long-term exile, impact also means sustaining journalistic capacity –  training new reporters and ensuring that independent reporting can continue despite repression and physical separation from the country.

The Syrian outlet Enab Baladi, which settled in Turkey more than a decade ago, illustrates this through its long-term presence. Over time, a new generation of Syrian journalists has emerged in exile, some of whom passed through the Enab Baladi newsroom and now continue their careers in other media environments.

As Kholoud Helmi, co-founder and board member of Enab Baladi, points out:

“Impact for exiled media is not only about the stories we publish, but about the continuity we protect. In contexts like Syria, where independent journalism has been systematically targeted, sustaining a newsroom over time becomes an act of resistance in itself. Investing in new generations of journalists in exile ensures that the space for independent, ethical reporting does not disappear, even when we are physically separated from our communities.”

For the Russian outlet The New Tab, this idea is not a byproduct but the core concept. Its model is explicitly built around training and supporting aspiring journalists inside Russia, while facilitating collaboration with regional and international media and preserving access to reliable information from within the country.

Mikhail Danilovich, founder and CEO of The New Tab, says:

“The way in which we produce and publish stories can already be considered impact.”

At the same time, exiled media are often at the forefront of innovation. Faced with distribution barriers and changing audience habits, they experiment with new formats and storytelling approaches.

Another Russian outlet in exile, 7×7, is experimenting with role-playing games and interactive formats to make complex issues more engaging and accessible. Editor-in-chief Oleg Grigorenko explained:

“We all deal with the phenomenon of ‘news fatigue’ – so the question is how we can share information with audiences successfully. At 7×7, we have developed different role-play games – for example, together with a Russian feminist media, about abortion rights in Russia.”

Similarly, the Iranian outlet Tehran Bureau has experimented with new storytelling formats. As co-director Marketa Hulpachova explained:

“We did a lot of research about how public tax money is being shifted away from the public. But charts and infographics are a boring thing to look at, so we developed a series of short films that tackle the issue of corruption within a fictionalized story instead.”

These innovations are not only tactical responses – they contribute to the evolution of journalism more broadly.

Impact goes far beyond national borders.

Exiled media play a crucial role beyond their countries of origin. In contexts where access for foreign journalists is restricted or impossible, they often become primary sources of verified information for international audiences. Their reporting feeds into global media coverage, informs policymakers, and shapes public understanding of otherwise opaque situations.

This function is not about visibility for its own sake, but about providing reliable, contextualized insight from environments where independent reporting has been systematically dismantled. Outlets such as Mediazona and OVD-Info provide datasets on war casualties and political repression that are regularly cited by international media and organizations.

Investigations by The Insider, in collaboration with Der Spiegel, uncovered the structure of Russian disinformation campaigns targeting Western democracies, identifying more than 100 fake websites and accounts linked to state actors, and traced the whereabouts of fugitive Wirecard executive Jan Marsalek, revealing his life under Russian intelligence protection in Moscow.

A comparable example comes from Belarus, where reporting by an exiled outlet prompted international coverage and further investigation:

“We uncovered a connection between Belarusian political prisoners subjected to forced labour and a German AfD politician who owns an onion farm in Belarus. We published the first part of the story before the research was complete to trigger reactions – and it worked. Major European outlets picked up the story and contributed additional evidence. The case is now being heard at the International Court.”

–      Reform.news | Exiled media outlet from Belarus

Exiled media provide essential expertise in global investigative collaborations: Reporting by Syrian journalists in exile from SIRAJ and helped uncover the systematic abduction of children under the Assad regime, while contributions by Initium Media to cross-border environmental investigations revealed that major Chinese cities are sinking due to groundwater overuse – an issue with global economic and ecological implications.

But exiled media do more than supply information – they also shape how countries are understood abroad:

“It is my job as a Venezuelan journalist to ensure that when the world talks about Venezuela, we are not only talking about oil, Trump or Maduro, but about the Venezuelan people, whose lives are currently being negotiated in rooms they aren’t allowed to enter.”

–      Gabriela Ramirez | Exiled journalist from Venezuela

Exiled media act as intermediaries between closed societies and the global public sphere, and are an indispensable pillar of the global information ecosystem.

Some forms of impact may only be recognized in retrospect.

This is particularly evident in the documentation of human rights violations, war crimes, and systemic abuses. Such reporting creates records that can be used by international courts, investigative bodies, or future domestic justice processes.

Syrian outlets such as Enab Baladi have played a role in documenting events that may later form the basis of legal accountability. Even when immediate consequences are absent, the act of documentation preserves evidence and counters attempts to erase or distort reality.

For editor-in-chief of Rozana Media, Loujein Haj Youssef, accountability and transitional justice are key drivers of editorial priorities:

“Citizens are looking to understand transitional justice processes, what to expect, and how other countries have navigated similar transitions. It is likely that explanatory, legally grounded journalism will remain in high demand as Syrians seek clarity amid unresolved trauma and institutional ambiguity.”

A step towards conceptualizing the dimensions of impact.

Across these discussions, impact is distributed across audiences, timeframes, and levels of society. It can be immediate or delayed, visible or hidden, individual or collective.

This complexity also explains why impact remains so difficult to define and measure. Many of its effects – shifts in perception, the circulation of information through other actors, or the preservation of evidence – leave few traceable indicators, and attribution is often uncertain. Yet their significance is consistently recognized by those who depend on this work.