"No News Is Bad News (NNIBN) was an excellent programme in terms of effort, on the part of Free Press Unlimited (FPU), the European Journalism Centre (EJC) and all their partners. The programme has supported courageous, committed, energetic and initiative-taking partners who have promoted rights to access to information, investigative journalism, gender equality, media literacy, content and reach in and for media dark areas, and more. The international programme has achieved some significant milestones around safety of journalists. Most of the partners report increased capacity, stronger organisations and progress on key quality, advocacy and gender goals. Many are more sustainable than before the programme started. FPU has become a learning organisation with strong skills in research, advocacy and M&E. Thanks toNNIBN, FPU has also become a leading advocacy organisation for media freedom that plays a big role in shaping international networks and initiatives.
However, as evaluators we face a conundrum – on the one hand almost all the activities went well, the partners are satisfied, the funders are happy and colleagues in other agencies are, generally, admiring of FPU and EJC. Yet on the other hand, we see few clear decisive impacts at the national level – i.e. ‘a diverse and professional media landscape’ – which is the ‘impact statement’ in the Theory of Change. So why is it difficult to say what it amounted to? Firstly, the programme was probably too thinly spread across too many countries (some with only one or two partners) to really show an impact at the media landscape level as a whole. Which means that the ultimate objective of the Theory of Change is still out of reach in most regions and countries in the programme. Secondly, advocacy and human rights work in general is a slow process, requires working in coalitions (which FPU/EJC do), often invisible, too, and that when there is a breakthrough it is hardly ever acknowledged." (Executive summary)