Director of the Center for Journalism and Liberty, Dr. Courtney Radsch co-authored an opinion piece arguing that philanthropy needs to stop being reactive and instead take a proactive ecosystem approach to fighting misinformation.

Each day seems to bring fresh challenges in the search for reliable information. The 2024 election is already a major flashpoint, with politicians and far-right activists spouting lies about the economy, immigration, voting, and more. “Anti-woke” efforts and campaigns to slow climate action also rely on and benefit from disinformation.

Technology, particularly social media, exacerbates these global trends, which have real consequences. Facebook, for example, helped spread misinformation about the 2020 election results, which in turn helped incite the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol. Despite this, many platforms have scaled back their efforts to fight mis- and disinformation.

A.I. brings further challenges, including fabricating research that influences people’s health-care decisions, manipulating deep fake videos, or even inventing news stories that seem all too real. The A.I.-generated fake photo of a plane crash near the Pentagon this spring, which briefly spooked financial markets, is just a precursor to far more sophisticated tactics to come.

Fortunately, philanthropy is waking up to these threats. Grant makers are seeing how both misinformation — inaccurate information — and disinformation, which is deliberately shared, undermine the work of the nonprofits they support. Whether it’s increasing vaccine hesitancy, eroding faith in democracy, or disproportionately harming already marginalized communities, the spread of falsehoods and conspiracy theories is threatening to reverse progress toward the social good.

“It feels like the house is on fire,” noted one foundation staff member at the recent Skoll World Forum.

Global leaders share these concerns. The United Nations secretary general recently wrote that disinformation “poses an existential risk to humanity and further endangers democratic institutions and fundamental human rights.” The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development launched a resource hub for mis- and disinformation. Aid agencies are mobilizing, too: The United States Agency for International Development has multiple regional programs to combat mis- and disinformation in areas such as the Sahel region of Africa and the Caucasus.

Grant makers are also working toward solutions, as seen in the rapid growth of media and fact-checking organizations. There are currently 417 active fact-checking projects in more than 100 countries, according to the Duke Reporters’ Lab. Many receive philanthropic support as well as financial backing from big tech firms. The International Fact-Checking Network at the Poynter Institute, for example, receives funding from foundations such as Craig Newmark Philanthropies, Google, and YouTube.

But philanthropy needs to go beyond simply reacting to mis- and disinformation on a case-by-case basis. Instead, grant makers should focus on creating a healthy information ecosystem that doesn’t exacerbate lies and falsehoods, limits their proliferation in the first place, and ensures a steady supply of quality information. To get there, philanthropists need to move beyond the piecemeal approach that current research and programming often takes and instead coordinate better, help enact policy change, and invest in more research to understand the scale of the problem.

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