Canal Gobierno is a television channel that launched operations in 2014 as part of the Secretariat for Social Communication of the Presidency in Guatemala. It doesn’t have a free-to-air frequency, but it is retransmitted on the programs of other channels. Its programming is also disseminated online.
Media assets
Television: Canal de Gobierno
State Media Matrix Typology: State-Controlled (SC)
Ownership and governance
The station is fully dependent on the presidential office, specifically the Secretariat for Social Communication. As the channel is a unit entirely belonging to the government, its administration is run by the president’s office.
Source of funding and budget
There is no recent information about the funding that the Secretariat for Social Communication of the Presidency allocates to the channel. According to local journalists, the station is fully funded by the government. In its first year of operation, it received GTQ 59m.
Editorial independence
The government has control over the content of the station whose programming consists of interviews with officials from various units of the presidential office as well as members of the government. The station’s programming is mostly designed to disseminate information about the government, particularly official messages of the president and his government.
No domestic statute and no independent assessment/oversight mechanism to validate the editorial independence of the station have been identified.
August 2023