Supporting Journalism By and For Immigrant and Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) Communities

Journalism everywhere is facing a major crisis: The decline of news media, increasing threats to press freedom and severe resource constraints prohibit journalists from covering crucial issues like environmental degradation and climate change effectively. 

Yet the problem runs even deeper. Many communities—especially Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC) and immigrant communities—have never been well-served by legacy media that is often responsible for producing harmful media narratives or ignoring urgent stories altogether. 

In Latin America, for instance, only 3% of people portrayed in the news are from Indigenous or tribal groups, despite making up at least 8% of the population. In the United States, only 6% of reporting positions in newsrooms are held by Black people, according to a 2022 Pew Research survey. In a 2024 Pew study, 60% of Black Americans said the news doesn’t cover the issues most important to them; 62% of Asian and 63% of Hispanic adults said the same.

At the same time, immigrant and BIPOC groups everywhere— often living in the most polluted and climate-vulnerable areas, displaced from Indigenous ancestral lands,  scapegoated by climate lobbyists and threatened by violence—bear the disproportionate brunt of environmental and climate impacts.

Meanwhile, these communities are bearers of generational knowledge and innovative solutions to address these issues. Indigenous lawyers and land defenders have overseen some of the most powerful legal environmental battles and victories, from Waorani people defending ancestral territory from oil development in Ecuador to Masaai leaders inventing new legal mechanisms to protect Masaai lands in Tanzania.

In an effort to bridge the gap, EJN has been implementing projects focused on bolstering Indigenous-led journalism since 2021. In 2024, the program expanded to include immigrant and BIPOC-serving media in the United States and Canada.

In the project’s first year, with the support of Nia Tero, EJN awarded grants to Indigenous journalists globally to report on environmental degradation and amplify Indigenous-led strategies for adaptation and resilience.

In 2022, this project was refunded by Nia Tero and received additional funding from Svenska Postkodstiftelsen (the Swedish Postcode Foundation), to highlight the role of Indigenous peoples as defenders of most of the world’s remaining biodiversity.

As part of the project, EJN provided story grants and mentorship to selected journalists, held webinars on Indigenous environmental issues and led an in-person training workshop in Nairobi, Kenya. We also produced a self-paced online course on Indigenous journalism (available in English and Spanish) in collaboration with Agenda Propia to provide journalists with a deeper understanding of the threats facing Indigenous peoples globally, and of Indigenous world views and cultural perspectives that center land and biodiversity stewardship.

Other projects at EJN have also centered storytelling by and for immigrant and BIPOC communities: In 2023, our Asia-Pacific project, supported by Sida, funded 30 stories by Indigenous and minority ethnic journalists in the region on environmental and climate issues. And with the support of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in 2024, EJN supported Lede New Orleans, a community media group in Louisiana, to run a climate change journalism fellowship program for local BIPOC reporters, and bring the reporting to community events.

With renewed support from Nia Tero in 2024, EJN has launched a comprehensive training program in which selected Indigenous journalists, in addition to receiving story grants and mentorship, participated in a synchronous, discussion-based six-week virtual training program to deepen their data and multimedia storytelling skills, and learn more about Indigenous approaches to journalism and digital safety and security.

Also in 2024, EJN has received funding from the Wikimedia Foundation to further expand knowledge equity in these under-represented communities through two primary activities. 

• Read more about Wikimedia Foundation's support to EJN and other nonprofits here and here. 

First, we are supporting Indigenous journalists globally through a training program and story grants focused on investigative techniques. Through the leadership of our Indigenous media trainers Amira Abujbara and Stella Paul, journalists are benefiting from 1-1 editorial mentorship, hands-on skills training, connections with key experts, and funding to complete a longform investigative reporting project. 

Second, EJN is investing in local newsrooms in the United States and Canada who serve under-reported communities—immigrants, Black, Indigenous and people of color. We are doing this through seed grants to enable them to develop their own innovative reporting projects that call attention to environmental and climate justice issues, groups and/or locations lacking representation in mainstream media.

Banner image: A United States Air Force fire truck responds to a large wildfire at Joint Base San Antonio in Texas. A University of Washington and The Nature Conservancy study found that Black, Hispanic and Native American groups are 50% more vulnerable to wildfires than other groups / Credit: Brian Boisvert for US Air Force.