Jordan Press & Publishing Company

The Jordan Press & Publishing Company is a Jordanian public shareholding company best known for publishing Ad-Dustour, one of Jordan’s leading Arabic-language daily newspapers. Ad-Dustour first appeared on 28 March 1967 following the merger of the West Bank/Jerusalem publications Filastin and Al-Manar, shortly before the June 1967 war, and the Jordanian government acquired a share of the publisher in 1986.

Media assets

Publishing: Ad-Dustour

Ownership and governance

Ad-Dustour was launched in 1967 as a private publication, and the Jordanian government acquired a share of the publisher in 1986; the contemporary shareholding structure is now anchored by Rama Investment and Savings Company, a Social Security-linked investment vehicle that holds just under 30 per cent of the Jordan Press & Publishing Company. Engineers’ pension and social-insurance funds together hold roughly 18 per cent, with the remainder held by other institutional and private shareholders. Rama Investment and Savings Company, as a Social Security-linked vehicle, is the largest single shareholder by a substantial margin, even though it does not hold a controlling stake; the ownership chain therefore connects the publisher indirectly to the Jordanian state through the Social Security architecture, without a direct state shareholding.

The Jordan Press & Publishing Company operates under a nine-member Board of Directors with terms expiring in November 2028 per Securities Depository Center registry information. Current leadership at the publisher, per Ad-Dustour materials reviewed by SMM during the cycle, comprises Faisal Al-Shboul as Chairman, Ghassan Al-Shaalan as General Manager and Yanal Al-Barmawi as Responsible Editor-in-Chief; the 2025 SMM baseline reference to Saif Sharif as General Manager and Nabil Sharif as Editor-in-Chief is corrected for the 2026 cycle. Saif Sharif, a former chairman/General Manager of the company, died in July 2025; Nabil Sharif had served as Editor-in-Chief until February 2009 and Mustafa Riyalat is a previous Editor-in-Chief who preceded the current incumbent. The wider political environment for Ad-Dustour governance during the cycle was shaped by the September 2024 parliamentary elections and the formation of the Jafar Hassan government on 15 September 2024.

Source of funding and budget

Ad-Dustour has operated under acute financial distress for over a decade, with the Jordan Press & Publishing Company accumulating approximately JOD 28 million (approximately US$40 million at 2023 exchange rates) in losses since 2010. The company reported total revenues of approximately JOD 2.1 million in 2021, a modest increase from JOD 1.8 million in 2020. Annual net losses recorded during the most recent reporting cycle stood at JOD 0.37 million in 2022, JOD 0.19 million in 2023 and JOD 0.20 million in 2024, according to data from the Securities Depository Center.

The Jordan Press & Publishing Company does not benefit from a direct state operating subsidy in the manner of JRTV or Al-Mamlaka, but the publisher continues to depend on government advertising contracts and public-institution subscriptions for its operating cash flow. Journalists and sector experts consulted by SMM for prior cycles have characterised these government advertising contracts and public-institution subscriptions as critical to the company’s continued operation, given the persistent decline in commercial advertising revenue across the wider Jordanian print-newspaper sector. The 2025/26 cycle produced no structural funding reform.

Editorial independence

Ad-Dustour has maintained a staunchly pro-government editorial orientation through the 2025/26 cycle, frequently prioritising coverage of the Royal Family and official Jordanian government announcements over critical or investigative reporting on domestic politics, governance or civil liberties. Human Rights Watch has documented Ad-Dustour’s editorial alignment with government restraints on freedom of expression, and the newspaper has not produced sustained critical coverage of the 2023 Cybercrime Law, the May 2025 blocking of twelve online news outlets or other contentious press-freedom issues during the cycle. The 2025 SMM baseline characterisation of Ad-Dustour’s editorial orientation remained accurate at the close of the 2025/26 review window.

No legal protections operate to assure editorial independence at Ad-Dustour, and no independent oversight mechanism evaluates the newspaper’s editorial standards. The wider Jordanian press-freedom environment during the cycle has continued under the 2023 Cybercrime Law, which has been used against Jordanian journalists and commentators including Hiba Abu Taha (under the 2023 law) and Ahmad Hassan al-Zoubi (under earlier cybercrime provisions), and the May 2025 blocking of twelve online news outlets including Voice of Jordan, Raseef22 and Middle East Eye documented by Freedom House.

AI and digital policy

The Jordan Press & Publishing Company has not published a public-facing institutional AI policy. Jordan’s national digital-policy work is pursued primarily through the Ministry of Digital Economy and Entrepreneurship, with policy emphasis on infrastructure development, e-government services and AI ecosystem-building rather than a newspaper-publishing-specific generative-AI framework. No public-sector generative-AI framework specific to Ad-Dustour was identified during the 2025/26 review.

Classification rationale

The Jordan Press & Publishing Company (Ad-Dustour) remains classified as Captured Public (CaPu) for the 2026 cycle. The publisher is a Jordanian public shareholding company whose largest shareholder is Rama Investment and Savings Company, a Social Security-linked investment vehicle, with just under 30 per cent of shares; engineers’ pension and social-insurance funds together hold roughly 18 per cent, with the remainder held by other institutional and private shareholders. The company has no controlling shareholder and no statutory editorial firewall, but its ownership structure, financial fragility and dependence on government advertising and public-institution subscriptions expose the newspaper to sustained state and political-economic influence. Ad-Dustour’s editorial line remained strongly pro-government during the 2025/26 cycle, and SMM identified no ownership, governance, funding or editorial reform sufficient to move the outlet out of the CaPu category.

June 2026