Libyan News Agency (WAL)

The Libyan News Agency, rendered in English as WAL or LANA from its Arabic acronym, is Libya’s state news agency. It was established by Resolution No. 17 of 1964, issued on 1 October 1964, under the name Libyan News Agency. After the 1969 coup, it was reorganised and renamed the Jamahiriya News Agency (JANA), operating during the Gaddafi era as the authorised state distributor of most domestic and foreign news. It was taken off air during the fall of Tripoli in August 2011 and was later re-established under its original Libyan News Agency name after the collapse of the regime.

Like much of Libya’s state apparatus, the agency reflects the country’s prolonged political division. Following the post-2014 split, a parallel agency using the same name and historic branding operated under the eastern authorities. After the formation of the Government of National Unity (GNU) in 2021, a reunification effort was launched, including meetings between the Tripoli administration and the Benghazi branch. That effort did not produce a durable unified national agency. As Libya’s national split reopened and deepened, the agency again operates as two parallel organisations: a Tripoli-based agency aligned with the GNU, publishing mainly through lana.gov.ly, and a Benghazi-based agency aligned with the eastern authorities, publishing through the lananews.com brand and associated social channels.

Both editions present themselves as the national news agency, and both function as the official wire service of the authority that controls them. This profile treats the Libyan News Agency as a single state-media institution whose operations are currently split across two rival administrations.

Media assets

News agency: Libyan News Agency (WAL / LANA), operating in parallel Tripoli/GNU-aligned and Benghazi/eastern-aligned editions.

Ownership and governance

The agency is state-owned in both of its current forms, each operating under the de facto authority of the government or political authority that controls it: the GNU in the west, and the eastern Government of National Stability, House of Representatives and Haftar-aligned authority structure in the east. No public legal documentation clarifies the agency’s full ownership structure or governing statute in either branch, in keeping with the broader opacity of Libya’s institutional arrangements during the division.

According to journalists specialising in Libyan media consulted by SMM, appointments to the agency’s leadership are made at the discretion of the controlling authority, with no competitive or transparent selection process. Ibrahim Hadiya al-Majbari has been publicly identified as Director-General of the Libyan News Agency in recent years, including in international agency listings and LANA’s own earlier material. However, given the renewed split between Tripoli and Benghazi operations, current branch-level leadership arrangements should be treated cautiously. The Benghazi edition operates under separate eastern-appointed management.

Because Libya’s institutions, including ministries, courts and oversight bodies, are themselves fragmented into rival western and eastern versions, the agency has no unified national governing framework. Each branch answers to its respective executive or de facto authority.

Source of funding and budget

There is no publicly accessible financial documentation concerning the agency’s budget or funding streams in either of its forms. Consistent with past media-mapping work and testimonies gathered by the Media and Journalism Research Center (MJRC), the agency has been financed by the state authorities that control it: initially the Government of National Accord and later the GNU in the west, and the eastern authorities in the east.

In Libya’s media landscape, where commercial advertising markets remain weak and politically distorted, most news outlets rely on either direct government support, patronage or international donor funding. As a state-owned institution, the Libyan News Agency has shown no meaningful diversification of its financial base, and its dependence on the controlling authority is the defining feature of its funding.

Editorial independence

In both of its forms, the agency operates as a government mouthpiece. Interviews with journalists, independent media monitors and Libyan experts, alongside informal content analysis by MJRC, indicate that the agency’s editorial output overwhelmingly reflects the messaging priorities of the authority that runs it. The Tripoli edition aligns with the GNU and Tripoli-based institutions. The Benghazi edition aligns with the eastern government, the House of Representatives and the Libyan National Army / Libyan Arab Armed Forces under Khalifa Haftar. Its reporting routinely lacks critical scrutiny of the controlling authority’s policies.

No domestic statute, regulatory safeguard or external oversight mechanism has been identified that would guarantee, or even gesture toward, the agency’s editorial independence in either branch. Its institutional role remains closely tethered to the political objectives of whichever authority controls it, a legacy reinforced by its origins as a state propaganda instrument during the Jamahiriya era. The division compounds the problem: rather than one captured national agency, Libya now has two state-aligned wires, each serving as the official news service of a rival authority.

AI and digital policy

SMM found no evidence that the Libyan News Agency, in either of its forms, has published a dedicated public AI governance or editorial-use policy as of mid-2026.

Both branches operate news websites and social-media channels as their primary distribution platforms. The Benghazi edition has also presented online fact-checking-style features, but neither branch publishes a framework governing the use of AI in editorial production, verification, attribution, recommendation systems, audience analytics, synthetic-media labelling, content disclosure, bias mitigation or human editorial oversight. Digital activity is confined to distribution, archiving and presentation rather than disclosed editorial-technology governance.

Classification rationale

The Libyan News Agency is classified as State-Controlled (SC), a classification maintained from prior SMM cycles and unchanged for 2026. In both of its current forms it is state-owned, directed by leadership installed at the discretion of the controlling authority, financed by that authority, and editorially aligned with it, with no statutory or oversight safeguard for editorial autonomy.

The agency’s defining 2026 feature is structural: the post-2021 reunification effort has not held, and the agency again operates as two parallel state-controlled wire services, one aligned with the Tripoli-based GNU and one aligned with the Benghazi/eastern authority structure. The split does not change the typology, since each branch independently meets the determinants of state control. It makes Libya a dual-authority case in which a single national institution is mirrored on either side of the political divide. The agency therefore remains firmly in the SC category.

June 2026