Diario Nacional de Honduras (former Poder Popular)

Poder Popular was a state newspaper launched by the government of Honduras in May 2022, at the start of President Xiomara Castro’s term. It was introduced as a weekly government publication, with its first edition reported at 48 pages and a 20,000-copy print run. The outlet was created to give the state a dedicated printed and digital channel to articulate and promote the administration’s policies and its “refounding” project. In March 2026, shortly after the change of government, the incoming administration of President Nasry Asfura confirmed the closure of the print edition, announcing that it would be replaced by a digital-only state outlet, the Diario Nacional de Honduras.

Media assets

Publishing: Poder Popular, print and online, May 2022 to early 2026.

Digital successor: Diario Nacional de Honduras, announced as a digital-only replacement.

Ownership and governance

Poder Popular was a state outlet with no independent ownership, board or arm’s-length governance. Launched in May 2022, it was administered under the Secretaría de Planificación Estratégica (SPE), the government body that housed the executive’s planning and communications structure during the Castro administration, alongside the state television channel TNH / Canal 8 and Radio Nacional de Honduras (RNH). Its leadership was designated within the executive, and its editorial purpose, by the account of its own leadership and government representatives, was to disseminate the administration’s policies.

The 2026 transfer of power reshaped the state-media structure decisively. The Asfura government moved to suppress the Secretaría de Planificación Estratégica as part of a wider restructuring of state entities. Jairo Rivera Mena, sworn in by President Asfura as executive director of the state media, announced the closure of the print Poder Popular and a broader restructuring of the state-media system. The new administration said the print operation cost around three million lempiras per month and described the inherited state-media staffing structure as oversized, with reported plans to reduce staffing from roughly 460–500 employees to about 120–150 across the state-media system. In place of the print newspaper, the administration announced the Diario Nacional de Honduras, to operate exclusively in digital format.

Whether in print or digital form, the outlet remains part of a direct state-media structure: created, owned, funded and directed by the executive, with no independent board, no competitive appointment process and no statutory safeguard for editorial autonomy. The switch to a digital successor does not create an arm’s-length public-service framework.

Source of funding and budget

Poder Popular operated on government funding and had no meaningful independent commercial-revenue base. Prior SMM mapping recorded a 2023 public allocation for the newspaper, while later reporting documented broader spending through the Secretaría de Planificación Estratégica and state-media payroll structures. By early 2026, the incoming administration reported the print operation’s running cost at around three million lempiras per month, or approximately 36 million lempiras per year, and cited that cost as a reason for closing the print edition.

The paper’s funding ran through its parent government body rather than through any ring-fenced, audience-based or independently governed mechanism. The 2026 restructuring therefore changed the format and administrative setup, but not the basic funding relationship: the successor digital outlet remains dependent on the executive’s communications budget.

Editorial independence

Poder Popular functioned as a government newspaper whose central mission was to highlight and promote the administration’s policies. Its own institutional framing described it as part of President Castro’s government plan for the “refounding” of the country, and independent reporting characterised it as an ideological organ of the Castro-Zelaya governing project. In 2025 it was also criticised as a vehicle for pro-government electoral messaging. The incoming administration’s own 2026 assessment similarly described the print outlet as oriented more toward defending the previous government than toward neutral institutional information.

No domestic legislation enshrined Poder Popular’s editorial independence, and no independent oversight body or evaluation mechanism existed to verify its impartiality. The editorial-control question is not ambiguous: the outlet was designed and operated as a government messaging channel, which is the basis for its State-Controlled classification. The same logic applies to the announced digital successor unless an independent governance framework is created, which SMM found no evidence of as of mid-2026.

AI and digital policy

SMM found no dedicated editorial AI-governance policy published by Poder Popular, the Diario Nacional de Honduras or the state-media body operating them as of mid-2026, and no disclosed framework governing the use of AI in editorial production, verification, attribution, synthetic-media labelling, recommendation systems, audience analytics or human oversight. Honduras has no comprehensive national AI law in force, and public-sector AI adoption remains at an early stage.

The principal 2026 development on the digital front is structural rather than editorial: the replacement of the print newspaper with a digital-only state outlet, framed by the government as a modernisation and cost-saving measure. Any AI use in the successor outlet would appear to follow the executive’s communications priorities rather than a published editorial standard.

Classification rationale

Poder Popular is classified State-Controlled because it was created, owned, funded and directed by the executive: a government newspaper with no independent board, no competitive or protected leadership, total dependence on public funding, and no statutory or institutional safeguard for editorial autonomy. There is no ambiguity over editorial control: the outlet’s stated and observed purpose was to promote the government of the day, which is the defining feature of an SC outlet rather than a captured public-service body.

It is not Captured Public because it was never an arm’s-length public-service institution whose governance was captured; it was a direct state communications instrument from creation. The 2026 cycle records a structural rather than a typological change: the print edition has been discontinued and a digital-only successor, Diario Nacional de Honduras, has been announced under the same executive control logic. On current evidence, that successor would carry the same State-Controlled character, since it remains a state-created, state-funded, executive-directed outlet with no independent governance. The SC classification is unchanged for 2026, with the print outlet recorded as discontinued.

June 2026