By Anna Starnes
Copyright cambridge-news
Who cares about your council tax rises and whether your bins are being regularly emptied? Who cares about the state of the roads, or if your local water company is upping bills while limiting supply?
Who cares about school dinners? The cost of living? Community cohesion or community tensions? Or whether your local team is going to be promoted?
The answer to all of the above, and more is, of course, CambridgeshireLive.
For all of the changes faced by our society over recent years in terms of politics, leadership, and how information is shared, CambridgeshireLive has been there with you, covering the stories that matter where people live and seeking factual and verified information to inform, educate and entertain our readers and online audiences.
None of this is easy. To do this, we have to be relevant, flexible and we have to take risks. We don’t always get it right. But when the platforms that our audiences choose to use for news and information change, we have to be there to meet that demand. When our audience expects new updates and fresh information on a story as it unfolds, we have to meet that need.
In times of strife or celebration, we are proud that our readers look to CambridgeshireLive as a trusted source of verified information and news.
You might wonder why we are telling you this today. Or, indeed, why you should care.
Sunday September 28 is World News Day, when news providers join forces to raise the importance and value of trusted, fact-based journalism.
CambridgeshireLive is joined by sister titles in the UK, Ireland and the USA, including the Mirror, the Express, the Manchester Evening News, the Daily Record, the Liverpool Echo and Birmingham Mail, Wales Online, Belfast Live, the Irish Mirror and the Irish Star, to name a few, to collectively shine a light on the value of our journalists and our journalism in a world when it can sometimes difficult to know who to trust.
You might wonder why any of this matters. But in 2025, journalism in the UK has never been more threatened and, simultaneously, access to factual, reliable information has never been more important.
It has never been a more deadly time to be a journalist. Globally, there have been 48 journalists killed in 2025 alone. There are more than 70 journalists missing world-wide and more than 350 journalists are behind bars because of the work they do. In many of these known cases, the journalists have been covering stories which would otherwise go untold.
In the UK, journalists are increasingly targeted with threats and acts of violence for simply doing their jobs. They are increasingly the victims of stalking and harassment. At Reach alone, online threats of violence or attempts to discredit or intimidate our journalists have more than doubled year on year.
Add to that the fact that journalism courses are having their government funding cut, plus the challenges to accessing reliable information brought about by social media platforms and big tech, and journalism is in a perilous position.
And this is important. Because if these attempts to silence journalists were successful, we would find ourselves in a world where verified, fact-checked and trusted information was so severely depleted, it would be entirely swamped by opinion, conjecture and unreliable information dressed as fact.
You would no longer have that steady spotlight being shone on all the ‘small stuff’ that matters to you, your family, your neighbours and friends.
Our councils, governments and institutions would not be scrutinised or held to account. The chance for journalism to campaign, make change or to improve our communities would be gone. And the big stuff? Without verified news and journalism, how would you know what to trust or what to believe?
In a world which is better connected by online technology and in which we have been brought closer than ever before to our global neighbours and events, we now have to come together to recognise the value of trusted journalism and preserve the integrity of the information being shared.
On this World News Day, join CambridgeshireLive in raising and recognising the value of journalism and trusted news. Choose Truth. Choose Facts. Choose Journalism.
