The Association for International Broadcasting is one of those organisations you have probably never heard of, whose members you almost certainly watched this week. Founded in 1993 and run by chief executive Simon Spanswick, the AIB is the trade body for broadcasters whose output crosses borders. Add its members' audiences together and you get to more than a billion people every week. It is, quietly, the network behind the networks.
What the partnership does
International broadcasting has a particular problem: the more of the world you cover, the more of the world you have to do paperwork in. Some of the AIB's biggest members run their global freelance operations through journalist.net: one place to find verified professionals across 180+ countries, one booking flow for contracts, insurance and payment, one consolidated invoice instead of a stack of separate wire transfers and currencies.
The journalism stays thrillingly unpredictable. The admin becomes boring. That is the correct way round.
The AIBs
Each November the AIBs, the association's international media excellence awards, bring the best factual video, audio and digital work from around the world to a London gala. We have been proud sponsors of the evening. The 2025 edition opened the new Park Hyatt London River Thames and was hosted by South African journalist Ayanda Charlie, who won the Emerging Talent award herself the year before. The trophies get handed out by the people who earned them. We like that about the AIB.
The AIB Pass
The newest piece of the partnership is the AIB Pass: an industry-wide press verification badge we built together. Journalists apply with referees and work samples; once approved, the pass appears on their journalist.net profile, and broadcasters in more than 100 countries can see at a glance that this person is exactly who they say they are.
Trust used to live in a producer's contact book. The AIB Pass makes it portable.
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