World News Day asks newsrooms to show how trusted journalism works

World News Day is asking newsrooms around the world to show audiences how they find, check and explain information as its 2026 campaign takes place on 28 September. BBC reporter Ian Youngs says more than 1,000 news providers have signed up. The campaign matters to readers because it addresses a growing gap between the places people find news and the news organisations that produce it.

The campaign’s stated message is ‘Know the facts. Understand what matters. Choose Trusted Journalism.’ Its website asks participating newsrooms to use their platforms to show why fact-based reporting matters and to highlight the impact of their work. Organiser Branko Brkic says the day is a rallying point for journalism, rather than a fundraiser.

What the campaign is asking newsrooms to show

Brkic, a co-organiser of World News Day and founder of Project Kontinuum, set out the case in a statement published by WAN-IFRA. He wants newsrooms to explain the work behind their stories: reading documents, finding witnesses, checking claims, protecting sources, questioning powerful people and correcting mistakes in public. He argues that the process should be visible to audiences who are being asked to trust the result.

For Brkic, reporting also involves explaining what a piece of information means. A flood level, budget line or vote count tells readers that something happened, he wrote; journalism should establish context, including why an event happened and who was affected. He said the campaign would draw attention to the checking behind breaking stories, the work involved in investigations, corrections and local reporting.

Why organisers say the moment matters

Brkic draws on two experiences in his published argument. He recalls beginning a book-publishing career in Yugoslavia in the mid-1980s as, in his account, shared facts began to break down. He also describes journalists examining documents about state capture in South Africa. He presents both as reasons for his belief that reliable information is essential to a functioning society; the wider consequences he describes are his assessment, not a finding measured by the news-use surveys.

In a separate BBC interview, Brkic said news organisations that once competed needed to work together. ‘If we do not change the game, we are just not going to exist,’ he told the BBC. That is his warning about the industry’s future, not an established prediction. The BBC says participants include the New York Times, Reuters and the Kyiv Independent, which are sharing editorials, advertisements and cartoons for the day.

Brkic wrote that more than 1,000 newsrooms in over 100 countries would mark World News Day together. That figure is the organiser’s account of participation, not an independently audited total. The BBC separately reported that more than 1,000 news providers had signed up. The campaign website gives 28 September 2026 as the date and invites newsrooms to share examples of their reporting with audiences.

How people are finding news

The Reuters Institute’s 2026 Digital News Report provides context for the appeal. Across the 48 markets it studied, 54% of respondents used social media and video networks to access online news, compared with 51% who used news organisations’ own websites and apps. The report says social and video networks were, on average, the most widely used way of accessing online news across those markets for the first time.

The institute describes a shift towards news consumption through platforms and growing experimentation with AI chatbots. It also records anxiety, disengagement and cynicism among audiences, alongside openness to new formats and continued belief in what journalism can offer. Those findings describe surveyed habits and attitudes. They do not show that using a platform causes people to trust news less, or that audiences have stopped seeking reporting from news organisations.

World News Day’s response is to ask newsrooms to make their reporting methods easier to see. Brkic argues that explaining how facts were obtained, what they mean and how errors are fixed gives audiences grounds to judge a story for themselves. Whether this year’s campaign changes trust or news habits remains an open question; its immediate activity is the coordinated publication and promotion of journalism on 28 September.