Around the world, illiberal regimes seek to control the flow of information. But they themselves are often open to certain new ideas — the innovations that other regimes have successfully used to suppress or obscure information that is unflattering or undermines their authority. This mutual emboldening adds another advantage to an already unfair fight, as enterprising regimes advise one another on the latest tools to constrain civil society.

But journalists are increasingly fighting back — through collaborations of their own across international borders. Take Latin America, where regimes have learned from one another the finer points of implementing stifling censorship laws. Such prohibitions on free speech have spread like wildfire across countries from Venezuela to Nicaragua to El Salvador, and reporters have discovered overnight that their work is illegal.

To combat this, journalists across the region have joined forces to hold governments accountable. Through an international nonprofit, CONNECTAS, they have written stories about the Nicaraguan regime’s abuses of power, filing them outside of the country in order to elude legal retaliation. This international network has also republished and amplified such stories across a network of international media outlets, shining a light on the region’s efforts to keep the public in the dark.

Elsewhere, in the Middle East, the notorious Bashar al-Assad regime that recently fell in Syria had developed a sophisticated methodology to flout Western sanctions through clandestine collusion with other governments. An international collaboration among Syrian, Dutch, Ukrainian, Romanian, Serbian, and Italian journalists uncovered a flourishing trade in phosphate, an ingredient in fertilizer, between Syria and various European countries, likely abetted by Russia. Whether inadvertent or nefarious, this conduct among multiple governments to circumvent sanctions enriched the Assad regime, which had committed human rights atrocities in Syria. It took journalists working across borders to uncover the truth, and the reporting pressured European authorities to beef up enforcement of sanctions on the regime.

At our organization, Global Press, we encourage cross-border reporting, which can upend the carefully controlled narrative that a regime seeks to push domestically. For example, our reporters based in the Democratic Republic of Congo and in Uganda collaborated in August to report on the alarming spread of a new strain of mpox across the border from DRC to Uganda, hitting children particularly hard. Although Ugandan health authorities sought to suppress the information and urged Ugandans to ignore reports of mpox, our cross-border team was able to deeply investigate and substantiate the disease’s spread into Uganda and educate the public on both sides of the border.

Yet the profound impact from international journalism collaborations doesn’t come for free. At Global Press, we’ve recently expanded our operating model to select reporting fellows across multiple countries to report on key themes that span borders, such as civil liberties. As we’ve assembled our new cohort, I’ve come away inspired from each candidate interview — both by each local perspective and by the poignant linkages our fellows can explore across multiple communities. Each of these conversations with reporters highlighted the necessity for fellowships, reporting grants, and other financial aid to support these complex cross-border projects.

As illiberal regimes take pointers from one another, the sum of their efforts to suppress information is greater than the parts. But two can play at this game. In 2025, with the right far-sighted philanthropic support, journalists will continue to find their voices by building bridges internationally — and holding all governments accountable.