The owners of the Evening Standard have launched a foundation to promote independent journalism around the world and to restore confidence in the newspaper industry.

Alexander and Evgeny Lebedev, who also own the Independent and Russian pro-democracy newspaper Novaya Gazeta, have established The Journalism Foundation, to demonstrate the importance of freedom of speech and to champion investigative journalism.

The charity will award bursaries to individual reporters and a website will be set up to monitor issues affecting journalists internationally.

A training programme is being funded in Tunisia to teach journalists how to report on the countrуТs fledgling democracy after the Arab Spring.

The foundation is also backing a website in Stoke-on-Trent that will report on local politics and encourage people to engage in the democratic process.

Former Independent editor Simon Kelner is to be chief executive of the new organisation. Evgeny Lebedev heads a board of trustees including Baroness Kennedy, the human rights lawyer, Lord Fowler, former chairman of the Commons Media Select Committee and Sir John Tusa, former head of the BBC World Service.

The Lebedevs said they hoped to help journalists Уshine a light on regimes that are often autocratic and brutalФ.

УIn Africa, Asia, Latin America, and even within Europe, these brave activists are harried and harassed until their lives are made intolerable. Those of us who believe in the principles of democracy are duty-bound to help them comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. The Foundation will promote free and fair journalism across the globe, at a time when it appears to be running out of friends. We will provide start-up funding, but want to work in unison with others who support our founding principles. It is a huge privilege for us to be involved in the British press. The challenge is to extend the virtues of free and fair journalism to those whose lives it can improve. That is a challenge we relish.Ф

Evgeny Lebedev also called on newspaper proprietors to Уput aside our factional interests and do whatТs best for our industryФ in light of the phone hacking revelations and the Leveson Inquiry, and come together to discuss Уself-regulation, privacy and reform of our libel laws.Ф

Alexander Lebedev said: For over 20 years I have argued that democracy cannot flourish in countries without a free press. And it is only by championing brave, investigative journalists across the globe that international corruption can be tackled effectively.