World News Day 2025: Choose Truth, Choose Facts, Choose Journalism

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Editorial

World Association of Newspapers (WAN-IFRA) in collaboration with other global news partners from over 100 countries, including Midwest Herald—the Worldwide Acclaimed Community Newspaper, will be observing the 2025 ‘World News Day’, globally from September 23 – September 28, 2025.

This unique occasion is an opportunity to amplify the power and impact of journalism. The global awareness campaign is to amplify the value of fact-based journalism. This year’s Theme—’Choose Truth; Choose Facts; Choose Journalism,’ is a reminder that societies only thrive when the truth is told.

Together with World Editors Forum, The Canadian Journalosm Foundation, Project Kontinuum and International Fund for Public Interest Media (IF), newspaper publishers around the globe will campaign to draw public attention to
the role that journalists play in providing trustworthy news and information that serves
citizens and democracy.

For Nigeria, the date should provoke more than ceremony; it should stir reflection on the state of our own press—its resilience, its vulnerabilities, and its indispensable role in nation-building.

From the days of the anti-colonial struggle to the long nights of military dictatorship, Nigerian journalism has stood as a bulwark against oppression.

The press earned its reputation as the “Fourth Estate” not by flattery but by sacrifice — with journalists jailed, newspapers banned, and reporters hounded for insisting that the people had a right to know. That legacy remains the backbone of our democracy.

Yet in 2025, the Nigerian press stands at a crossroads. On one hand, courageous reporters still expose corruption, question governance failures, and give voice to marginalized communities. On the other, the industry is battered by declining revenues, political pressures, digital misinformation, and a rising tide of public distrust. Too often, sensationalism is rewarded over substance, while shrinking newsrooms compromise the depth of investigative reporting.

The challenges are stark. Journalists in Nigeria continue to face harassment, arrests, and in some cases, violence — often for pursuing stories that touch raw nerves in high places.

Disinformation, fuelled by social media and AI-generated content, spreads faster than fact, leaving citizens confused and vulnerable. And financial instability threatens the very survival of independent outlets, reducing diversity in voices and perspectives.

But the duty of journalism is clear: to inform, to scrutinize, to hold power accountable, and to give citizens the tools to participate meaningfully in democracy. For Nigeria, where governance deficits remain profound and the public yearns for trust, the press cannot afford to falter more than this.

World News Day 2025 should therefore be more than symbolic. It must be a call to Nigerian journalists to recommit to fairness, accuracy, and courage. It must be a call to government to protect press freedom rather than treat it as a threat. And it must be a call to citizens to support independent journalism, for without it, truth dies, democracy weakens, and society is left in darkness.

The health of Nigeria’s democracy will be measured not only by the strength of its institutions, but by the vibrancy of its press. To weaken the press is to weaken the nation itself.