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Read this article in French in Médianes.
For much of the 2010s, journalism’s crisis was framed as economic. As social media platforms became gatekeepers of revenue and distribution, newsrooms were told to adapt: repair broken business models, build subscription bases. Financial stability was treated as the only prerequisite for independence. If journalism could sustain itself, it would be safe. But now it is clear that economic independence is not enough. Legal pressure—from lawsuits to the threat of litigation—can impose costs that directly affect the financial stability of news organizations, even when their business models appear sustainable.
In the US, the dangers of legal pressure on financial stability became most clear with a lawsuit that led to the collapse of Gawker—bankrolled by Peter Thiel, the tech billionaire. It demonstrated how litigation could be weaponized to dismantle a newsroom, as we talked about on a recent episode of the Journalism 2050 podcast. The case was widely covered in Europe, yet largely treated as an American anomaly.
That “anomaly” now looks structural. In 2024 and 2025, both ABC News and CBS agreed to multimillion-dollar settlements in defamation cases brought by Donald Trump. In the months that followed, both organizations announced layoffs, highlighting how legal disputes can translate into financial consequences for newsrooms and their employees. At the same time, editorial decisions at major outlets such as the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times have sparked debate about the growing influence of owners whose broader business interests depend on political and regulatory environments. These developments suggest that even large, well-resourced news organizations are not immune to pressures capable of reshaping editorial independence.
Victor Pickard, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, describes this moment in the United States—one in which journalists such as Don Lemon and Georgia Fort can be arrested while simply doing their jobs—as a “media polycrisis” in a recent essay in the Law and Political Economy Project (LPE). Lawsuits, consolidation, and politicized regulation become “discrete and cascading layers of ‘media capture’ that produce censorship, exclusion, and democratic failure,” he wrote.
The same is happening in Europe, where SLAPPs—strategic lawsuits designed to intimidate and exhaust critics—are increasingly used to burden newsrooms, according to two reports published in February, by Media Freedom Rapid Response (MFRR) and France’s Observatory for Press Freedom Attacks (OFALP). The MFRR report documented 344 legal incidents involving journalists and media outlets across Europe in 2025, including defamation lawsuits and other legal threats that can create significant financial pressure and stress. These cases often target reporting on politically sensitive subjects, from investigations into corruption and corporate interests to coverage of far-right movements, policing, and other forms of political or economic power. In several countries, these pressures are tied to illiberal or far-right movements that contest independent journalism.
In some countries, such as Hungary, which has fallen from 23rd to 68th out of 180 countries in the Reporters Without Borders World Press Freedom Index in the past fifteen years, these dynamics are now entrenched. Last month Mertek Media Monitor and the Rule of Law Lab at New York University published a report documenting Viktor Orbán’s government’s systematic efforts to repress independent media, through legal, economic, and administrative tools rather than overt censorship. Today, Orbán’s ruling party, Fidesz, “directly or indirectly controls about 80 percent of the entire media market.” The few independent outlets that remain—including 444, Telex, Átlátszó, and Válasz Online—have increasingly anchored their survival in reader funding as access to state advertising narrowed and ownership consolidated. Several outlets have faced investigations under the 2023 Sovereignty Protection Act: smear campaigns branding them “foreign agents” and repeated defamation suits and alleged violations of data-processing rules.
By looking at France, however, we can see how the tension between legal pressure and financial stability plays out in a country that’s long been considered a democracy-minded environment for journalism. As one French media professional told OFALP, “If we were ordered to pay €15,000 to the opposing party, we would have to shut down. We simply don’t have the financial cushion to pay even half of what they’re asking.” As an analysis by Médianes notes, for outlets operating with limited financial margins, the risk of litigation can quickly become an existential one.
StreetPress, an investigative outlet in France reporting on far-right networks and police violence, has spent more than €100,000 on legal defense in the past two years, and another €75,000 is anticipated in 2026 alone—nearly the equivalent of two reporting positions. The newsroom operates with a €1.5 million budget and has 15,500 donors—an example of a successful reader-funded newsroom. But these legal challenges cut deep.
“Even when we win, we lose money,” Johan Weisz-Myara, the founder of StreetPress, said. Many plaintiffs—public officials in particular—can have their legal costs covered by the public institutions they work for, such as ministries or local governments, a mechanism known in France as “functional protection.” “We are not only defending our reporting,” he added. “We are financing the defense ourselves, while those who sue us often do not bear the cost of initiating proceedings.” Today the team faces eighteen legal challenges, up from roughly ten a few years ago.
Not all cases go to trial. According to Weisz-Myara, three or four out of ten legal challenges are eventually dropped before reaching a final judgment. But the damage is often done long before that point. In many cases, he explained, the plaintiff’s goal is not necessarily to win in court. Instead, legal action can be used to create immediate pressure on a newsroom, forcing journalists to spend time and money defending themselves and sometimes discouraging further reporting before the substance of the accusations is ever addressed.
The pressure extends beyond courtrooms into political institutions. In October of 2025, a parliamentary inquiry was launched into the “neutrality, functioning, and financing” of France’s public broadcaster. As reported by The Guardian, critics have warned of an emerging “era of Trumpism” in which public media are placed under sustained political scrutiny.
To a journalist in the US, with a president who has been openly hostile to the press, these legal threats may seem more minor than they really are. Europe’s polycrisis in its most media-friendly countries, like France, looks different. But it remains a serious warning of things to come. “The problem isn’t unique to StreetPress, and we’re warning that there is a proliferation of abusive legal proceedings against the media and frequent circumvention of the press law in France,” Laure Chauvel, of Reporters Without Borders, said in a statement.
Independent outlets increasingly call for structured European defense funds to absorb litigation costs. Existing support—including financial and legal assistance from nonprofit organizations such as Media Defence, the European Centre for Press and Media Freedom, or France’s Fund for a Free Press—is essential but fragmented and difficult to access at scale; applying often requires time-consuming procedures and an organizational capacity that many smaller newsrooms lack. Cross-border cooperation is also emerging. The European network Sphera, the French StreetPress, and Hungary’s 444 support one another on investigations and exchange practices on managing legal risk. These exchanges matter. But they are not yet a system.
If the 2010s were about repairing revenue models, the 2020s are about defending the conditions of reporting. Economic sustainability remains essential—but resilience is now layered: editorial, economic, legal, and technological. It requires both internal capacity and collective support. Across Europe, independent newsrooms are beginning to build these forms of cooperation, recognizing that safeguarding press freedom now depends as much on solidarity as on sustainability.
Disclosure: The author leads Médianes, an independent media outlet, studio, and peer network working with more than 150 media organizations across Europe to strengthen editorial, economic, and technological independence. Médianes has provided marketing, Web, and fundraising support to OFALP (2024), to Reporters Without Borders (since 2021), and to StreetPress (since 2021). StreetPress and 444 are members of Sphera, a European media network coordinated by Médianes since 2024.
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