National News Agency (NNA)

The National News Agency (NNA) (Arabic: الوكالة الوطنية للإعلام) is the official state wire service of the Lebanese Republic, operating from the Ministry of Information building in Beirut and publishing in Arabic, French and English. NNA was established by Decree No. 7276 of 7 August 1961 as the Directorate of the National News Agency within the Ministry of Information, with the powers of the Ministry’s constituent units subsequently determined by Decree No. 8588 of 24 January 1962, and began actual operations on 19 March 1962.

Media assets

News agency: NNA

Ownership and governance

NNA operates as a directorate within the Ministry of Information, with all key decisions including editorial direction, personnel appointments and operational management taken through the Ministry’s administrative hierarchy. Like Radio Liban and unlike Télé Liban (which has a separate state-owned company form with a Chairperson and Board of Directors), NNA has not been constituted as a semi-autonomous public entity and remains embedded within the state’s administrative structure as a Ministry directorate, with no independent board and no legal or structural autonomy from the state. According to SMM-retained expert sources and local media experts consulted during prior cycles, NNA functions as a direct extension of the Lebanese state apparatus, its governance reflecting the broader top-down control that characterises Lebanon’s public media institutions.

The current Director of NNA, Ziad Harfouche, was tasked with the duties of Director in October 2019 following the dismissal of his predecessor, Laure Sleiman, who had served from 2008 to 2019. Sleiman’s removal was effected by decision of then-Minister of Information Jamal Jarrah after the agency’s coverage of the October 2019 anti-government protests, and Harfouche, previously a sub-editor at An-Nahar, has continued in the role through the 2025/26 SMM review period. The appointment mechanism, the absence of an independent governing board and the continuity of the post-2019 incumbent through Lebanon’s January 2025 political renewal and the February 2025 Salam cabinet’s formation collectively underscore the agency’s structural alignment with executive authority through the Ministry of Information rather than any arm’s-length governance arrangement.

Source of funding and budget

NNA is state-funded, with its budget provided through the Ministry of Information framework and Lebanese government appropriations. According to SMM-retained expert sources and journalists consulted during prior cycles, the agency has no independent revenue streams and relies on public subsidies to cover its operational expenses. No NNA-specific standalone allocation for the 2025/26 fiscal year was identified in publicly disclosed Ministry of Information or Ministry of Finance documentation reviewed by SMM during the cycle.

Budgetary details for NNA remain opaque: the agency does not publish financial reports or expenditure statements disclosing agency-specific revenue and expenditure, and no external audit mechanism or independent public-oversight body exists to ensure financial accountability for NNA’s operations. The absence of independent audited disclosure for the agency continued through the SMM 2025/26 review.

NNA’s financial position has deteriorated in line with Lebanon’s broader fiscal collapse. According to SMM-retained expert sources, journalists working for the agency continued to experience salary delays and chronic underpayment during the review period, mirroring patterns observed across Lebanon’s state-run media sector and consistent with the operational fragility highlighted by the July 2022 staff strike at state-run media outlets including NNA and Radio Liban. The 2025/26 cycle produced no structural funding reform for NNA: the agency continued to operate as a state-subsidised directorate under the Ministry of Information portfolio, and Lebanon’s severe currency devaluation and ongoing fiscal shortfalls during the review window have made the financial position of NNA and other state-funded information institutions structurally precarious.

Editorial independence

NNA’s editorial policy is directly aligned with the government narrative, with the agency’s directorate status placing editorial direction, content production, personnel appointments and day-to-day operations directly under the Ministry of Information’s authority. According to SMM-retained expert sources and media experts consulted during prior cycles, there is no formal statutory guarantee of NNA’s editorial independence, no internal editorial charter and no external body monitoring the agency’s compliance with journalistic or professional standards. The October 2019 removal of then-Director Laure Sleiman after the agency’s coverage of anti-government protests remains a defining historical demonstration of the agency’s structural vulnerability to executive editorial intervention, with Ziad Harfouche having continued in the role since his immediate appointment as Sleiman’s successor.

The 2025/26 cycle introduced a significant new editorial-direction event explicitly applicable to NNA. In March 2026, Information Minister Paul Morcos instructed official media outlets, with NNA and Télé Liban specifically named in public reporting, to comply with the government’s decision to restrict the broadcast of Hezbollah speeches and armed-wing statements, avoid verbatim publication of such material, and stop using privileged terminology such as “Islamic Resistance” except where directly quoted. The measure followed the Cabinet’s decision to reassert state authority over decisions of war and peace after Hezbollah’s March 2026 military escalation from Lebanon without state approval. Of the three Lebanese SMM-tracked state outlets in the 2026 dataset, NNA and Télé Liban were the two explicitly named in the directive’s public reporting, with the measure operationally extending executive editorial direction over NNA’s terminology, treatment of Hezbollah-related content and publication of Hezbollah-issued statements.

No statute or legal instrument guaranteeing the editorial independence of NNA has been identified in Lebanese law, and the agency’s directorate status places it directly within the Ministry of Information’s administrative hierarchy without any internal editorial charter or external oversight mechanism that would shield output from political interference. While Lebanon’s constitutional framework contains general guarantees for press freedom, these have not translated into institutional protections for NNA’s editorial autonomy.

AI and digital policy

NNA has not published a public-facing institutional AI governance policy. The agency’s digital modernisation reference points include its online news services, archive access, RSS, photo services and social-media distribution, but no cycle-window AI-tool deployment or generative-AI editorial integration was identified during the SMM 2025/26 review. The chronic underfunding of NNA, its directorate status within a Ministry that has prioritised wider information-sector modernisation rather than agency-level AI deployment, and the absence of independent technical resources have limited the agency’s capacity for cycle-window AI-related transformation.

Classification rationale

NNA remains classified as State-Controlled (SC) for the 2026 cycle. The agency operates as a directorate within the Ministry of Information without separate corporate or statutory form, with editorial direction, personnel appointments and operations placed directly under ministerial authority through the directorate structure, and there is no statutory editorial-independence guarantee, independent oversight body or arm’s-length editorial firewall protecting NNA’s output from government direction; the agency’s structural vulnerability to executive editorial intervention was demonstrated by the October 2019 removal of then-Director Laure Sleiman after the agency’s coverage of anti-government protests and the immediate tasking of Ziad Harfouche with the duties of Director, with Harfouche continuing in the role throughout the 2025/26 cycle. The agency is state-funded through the Ministry of Information framework, with no independent revenue streams identified, no NNA-specific standalone allocation for the 2025/26 fiscal year identified in publicly disclosed budget documentation, no audited public financial disclosure available for the agency’s operations, and continued salary delays and chronic underpayment for NNA journalists reported by SMM-retained sources during the cycle in line with Lebanon’s wider fiscal collapse. The 2025/26 cycle produced no governance, funding or editorial reform sufficient to move NNA out of the SC category despite the political renewal in early 2025: the agency continued to function as Lebanon’s official state wire service and a directly Ministry-controlled directorate during a cycle marked by Lebanon’s political reconstitution under President Joseph Aoun and Prime Minister Nawaf Salam, renewed security escalation involving Hezbollah and Israel from March 2026, and the March 2026 Ministry of Information directive explicitly naming NNA alongside Télé Liban as a principal recipient of executive editorial-direction instructions on the treatment of Hezbollah-related content.

June 2026