General Organization of Radio and TV Syria (ORTAS)

The General Organization of Radio and Television Syria (ORTAS), also referred to in current official Syrian sources as the General Organization of Radio and Television, is Syria’s principal state broadcaster. Radio broadcasting in Syria dates to the 1940s, and national television was launched in 1960. Historically, ORTAS operated from Damascus as the dominant audiovisual institution in the country, broadcasting through radio, terrestrial television and satellite channels in Arabic and other languages.

Following the collapse of the Assad regime in December 2024, ORTAS-owned outlets, including the Syrian News Channel, Al-Ikhbariyah Syria, temporarily ceased broadcasting amid the regime’s rapid fall. Under the new transitional authorities, state broadcasting began to be rebuilt. The Syrian News Channel was relaunched in May 2025 with a new visual identity and satellite broadcasts via Nilesat and Es’hailSat, alongside IPTV and social-media distribution. Damascus Radio was also relaunched in February 2026 in a new audio-visual and digital format. Other legacy ORTAS television assets remain part of the state-broadcasting structure, but their post-transition operational status should be treated cautiously.

Media assets

Television: Al-Ikhbariyah Syria, Nour El-Sham, Syria Drama

Radio: Radio Damascus

Ownership and governance

ORTAS is wholly owned and operated by the Syrian state and is overseen by the Ministry of Information, which controls its operations, strategic direction and management. Decision-making authority rests with the ministry and the executive, reinforcing ORTAS’s status as an arm of the Syrian state rather than an autonomous public-service broadcaster.

Following the collapse of the Assad regime, ORTAS came under the oversight of the Syrian transitional government, formed on 29 March 2025 under President Ahmed al-Sharaa. During the transition, Alaa Barsilo has been publicly identified as Director-General of the General Organization of Radio and Television.

The Ministry of Information saw a change of leadership during the cycle. Hamza al-Mustafa, appointed Minister of Information when the transitional government was formed in March 2025, was replaced in May 2026 by Khaled Fawaz Zaarour, who had previously headed the Faculty of Media at Damascus University. Zaarour assumed his duties on 10 May 2026. The change followed criticism of the ministry’s performance during the transition and formed part of a broader reshuffle of senior government posts.

Source of funding and budget

Detailed financial data on ORTAS remains unavailable, as Syrian authorities do not routinely disclose budgetary information for state-run media institutions. Based on SMM-retained interviews conducted in May 2024 with Syrian journalists living in exile, ORTAS was understood under the Assad regime to be entirely financed by the Syrian state, with no indication of independent revenue streams such as commercial advertising or donor support.

After the collapse of the Assad regime, ORTAS remains state-owned and state-funded. No public budget, audited accounts or independent financial disclosure was identified during the cycle. Its operations therefore continue to depend on allocations and resources provided through the transitional state authorities.

Editorial independence

ORTAS historically operated under a strictly pro-government editorial line, with its content shaped by the directives of the ruling regime. Syrian journalists and media scholars based abroad described the broadcaster as a propaganda vehicle that echoed official discourse and avoided dissenting or oppositional perspectives, closely aligned with the political and ideological interests of the now-collapsed Assad regime.

Following Assad’s fall, the broader media environment has opened considerably. Syria’s 2025 constitutional declaration contains language protecting freedom of expression and the press, independent and returning outlets have resumed operations, and the old Assad-era legal and security architecture of media repression has been significantly disrupted. Reporters Without Borders recorded a major improvement in Syria’s press-freedom ranking in 2026, while also noting that conditions remain very serious.

The transitional authorities and official media figures have described state outlets, including ORTAS channels, as being rebuilt to serve citizens and restore trust rather than reproduce the propaganda model of the previous regime. In practice, however, these changes remain incomplete. ORTAS is still state-owned, state-funded and subject to ministerial oversight. A 2026 media code of conduct has been launched, but implementation, oversight and enforcement mechanisms remain unclear, and no independent media regulator or statutory guarantee of ORTAS’s editorial autonomy is yet in place.

Reports of harassment, selective restrictions, weak journalist protections and continuing official influence persist in the wider media environment. Claims of a fully independent editorial transformation at ORTAS therefore remain aspirational rather than realised.

AI and digital policy

SMM found no evidence that ORTAS has published a dedicated public AI governance or editorial-use policy as of mid-2026.

The organisation’s priorities during the cycle have centred on resuming and stabilising broadcasting after the regime’s fall, including the relaunch of Al-Ikhbariyah Syria by satellite, IPTV and social-media platforms, and the relaunch of Damascus Radio in a new audio-visual and digital format. The Ministry of Information has also presented digital transformation as part of the rebuilding of official media, but no public ORTAS-specific framework was identified governing the use of AI in editorial production, verification, translation, attribution, synthetic-media labelling, content disclosure or human editorial oversight.

Classification rationale

ORTAS is classified State-Controlled (SC), a classification maintained from prior SMM cycles. Syria’s broader media environment has changed substantially since the fall of the Assad regime, and official media reform rhetoric now presents state outlets as moving toward a more public-service-oriented model. However, ORTAS itself remains wholly state-owned and state-funded, controlled by the Ministry of Information and answerable to the executive. Its senior oversight is exercised through state-appointed officials, and no independent regulator, statutory safeguard or publicly accountable governance structure exists to protect its editorial autonomy. These structural determinants keep ORTAS in the SC category for the 2026 cycle, even as the wider environment in which it operates has changed significantly.

June 2026