Independent media and the cultural responsibility of sustaining what we value
Independent media is often praised most loudly when it is threatened and supported most weakly while it is still alive.
We value the news, analysis, historical memory, and public debate that independent platforms provide. We forward their articles, discuss their reporting, criticize their decisions, and expect them to remain available whenever an important event occurs. Yet many of us rarely ask the practical question that determines whether these institutions can survive: Who pays for the work?
A website may appear free to the reader, but journalism is never free to produce. Reporters must be compensated. Editors must review submissions. Designers, translators, technicians, and administrators must be paid. Websites require hosting, maintenance, security, and constant attention. When readers do not help carry these costs, someone else must. That ‘someone else’ may be a government, a political network, a wealthy patron, or an advertiser with privileged access.
This creates a contradiction. We demand independent media, but often decline to finance the conditions that make independence possible.
Independence Has an Economic Foundation
Editorial independence is not sustained by good intentions alone. It requires an economic foundation broad enough to prevent any single sponsor from controlling what may be investigated, criticized, or published.
In many countries, subscriptions, memberships, and crowdfunding have become part of the operating model for independent journalism. These arrangements are imperfect, but they distribute responsibility across a community of readers. A platform supported by thousands of modest contributions has more room to exercise independent judgment than one whose survival depends on a small number of powerful benefactors.
The principle is simple: financial independence does not automatically guarantee editorial integrity, but editorial independence becomes much harder to defend without financial independence.
This is not only a media problem. Community organizations, cultural associations, professional networks, educational initiatives, and civic institutions face the same difficulty. People may praise their importance while assuming that someone else will sustain them. Appreciation is offered collectively; responsibility is transferred elsewhere.
Institutional Support Is Not Ideological Loyalty
A second problem is even more revealing. Some readers support an independent platform only while it publishes views with which they agree. The moment it presents a divergent argument, their support is withdrawn.
That is not institutional support. It is conditional approval.
A subscriber to an independent publication is not purchasing ideological obedience. The subscription helps maintain a forum in which evidence, interpretation, and competing viewpoints can be examined. If readers cancel whenever they encounter an argument they dislike, independence is punished precisely for practicing independence.
This does not mean that audiences should tolerate falsehood, defamation, corruption, or persistent professional misconduct. Readers have every right to demand accuracy, transparency, ethical standards, and corrections. Accountability is essential. But disagreement and misconduct are not the same thing. A platform should not lose its right to exist simply because it publishes an opinion that challenges one group, party, ideology, ethnicity, or political expectation.
The real test of our commitment to independent media is not whether we support it when it confirms our beliefs. It is whether we can continue supporting the institution while openly challenging an argument published within it.
The Cultural Gap
The hesitation to subscribe is sometimes described as a cultural problem. That description should be used carefully. It must not become a judgment that one community is naturally less generous, less responsible, or less capable of sustaining institutions than another.
Culture is not a fixed character. It is a collection of habits, expectations, and practices that societies learn over time. Communities accustomed to receiving online information without direct payment may not immediately regard a small recurring subscription as a civic contribution. People may also assume that advertising, volunteer labor, or unidentified donors are sufficient to keep a platform operating.
The gap, therefore, is not between good people and bad people. It is between valuing an institution and understanding the practical responsibility required to preserve it.
Closing that gap requires a change in public expectation. A subscription should not be viewed merely as the purchase of content. It can also be understood as a contribution to shared civic infrastructure: a modest investment in the continued existence of a place where information is gathered, memory is preserved, and public disagreement remains possible.
A Modest Example
Borkena offers one example of this wider challenge. It serves readers across North America, Europe, Ethiopia, and other parts of the world while operating without the staffing and financial advantages available to larger or politically connected media organizations. Its annual subscription costs $15, equivalent to $1.25 per month.
The amount is modest, but the underlying question is significant. If a platform serves a geographically dispersed community, should the responsibility for its survival rest almost entirely on a few individuals? Or should a larger number of readers carry a very small portion of the burden?
Borkena should not be supported because every reader agrees with everything it publishes. No serious platform could satisfy that standard. It should be evaluated by whether it provides a useful public forum, maintains editorial responsibility, permits competing viewpoints, and contributes information and analysis that the community would miss if the institution disappeared.
The same standard should be applied to other independent platforms. The purpose is not to promote one publication. It is to recognize a broader institutional reality: when communities do not finance their independent institutions, those institutions either disappear or become dependent on interests capable of financing them.
From Consumption to Stewardship
A durable culture of support begins when readers move from being consumers to becoming stewards. Stewardship does not require great wealth. It may take the form of one affordable subscription, a small recurring contribution, a sponsored membership for another reader, responsible advertising by community businesses, or simply informing others that a support program exists.
The contribution matters, but the habit matters even more. Institutions become resilient when support is predictable, widely distributed, and not withdrawn in response to every disagreement.
This also imposes responsibilities on media organizations. They must explain how subscriptions sustain their work, maintain professional standards, respect their audiences, correct errors, and demonstrate that public support strengthens rather than compromises their independence. Trust cannot be demanded; it must be earned and renewed.
The relationship is reciprocal. Readers should not demand independence without helping sustain it, and institutions should not request support without practicing accountability.
What Do We Want to Preserve?
Every community eventually discovers that institutions do not survive merely because they are useful. They survive because people develop the discipline to sustain them.
We should therefore ask ourselves a more demanding question. Do we support independent institutions, or do we support only those voices that agree with us?
If our financial commitment disappears whenever disagreement appears, then our loyalty was never to independence. It was to conformity.
A healthy civic culture does not require unanimous agreement. It requires institutions strong enough to hold disagreement without collapsing and citizens mature enough to sustain those institutions without demanding obedience in return.
Independent media cannot live on praise alone. If we believe that open discussion, credible information, cultural memory, and intellectual diversity matter, then supporting the institutions that make them possible is not charity. It is a shared responsibility.
We should not wait until a valuable institution disappears before discovering how much we depended on it.
Editor’s Note: Views in the article do not necessarily reflect the views of borkena.com
__
Join our Telegram Channel: t.me/borkena
Like borkena on Facebook
To submit a press release, send the submission to info@borkena.com
Add your business to Ethiopian Business Listing / Ethiopian Business Directory
Join the conversation. Follow us on X (formerly Twitter) @zborkena to get the latest Ethiopian news updates regularly.