Athens-Macedonian News Agency (ANA-MPA) is a news service based in Greece. It was established in 2008 following the merger of the Athens News Agency (ANA) and the Macedonian Press Agency (MPA).
Media assets
News agency: ANA-MPA
State Media Matrix Typology: State Controlled (SC)
Ownership and governance
ANA-MPA was established as a public entity company by a presidential decree. The agency has a board of directors with nine members, most of whom are appointed by the government. Since 2019, the agency has been subordinated to the Prime Minister’s Office, and the government also appoints the head of the agency.
Source of funding and budget
ANA-MPA is funded through a combination of state grant funds and advertising revenues. According to the agency’s annual reports, AMNA’s budget was €9.2m in 2019, €10.3m in 2020, and €9.1m in 2021, €10.3m in 2022, and €10.4m in 2023.
In recent years, the agency has reduced its reliance on state funding; however, state funds still make up the largest portion of the agency’s budget.
Editorial independence
The government does not impose any rules or regulations on ANA-MPA that require the agency to provide preferential coverage to the government. Our ad hoc content analysis for this report in May 2022 found the agency’s editorial coverage balanced and diverse.
Recent studies of Greek media suggest that the ANA-MPA agency is heavily influenced and used as a government tool to distribute news content to the country’s media outlets in a centralized manner. According to a 2024 report by the Vienna-based NGO International Press Institute, “the power of the ANA-MPA in shaping news content in the country remains high. This central role in the production and dissemination of news in Greece has made it a more important body for capture or control by successive governments via politicized appointments.” This new evidence has led us in 2024 to reclassify ANA-MPA as a State-Controlled Media (SC) in our taxonomy.
There is no domestic statute and no independent assessment and oversight mechanism to validate ANA-MPA’s editorial independence.
August 2024