Radio Liban

Radio Liban (also referenced as Radio Lebanon; Arabic: إذاعة لبنان) is the official state radio broadcaster of the Lebanese Republic and one of the oldest radio stations in the Arab world, founded in 1938 under the presidency of Émile Eddé as Radio al-Sharq (Radio Orient), with the Lebanese government taking direct operational responsibility from the French Mandate authorities in April 1946. Radio Liban operates as a directorate within the Ministry of Information rather than as a separately incorporated public entity, distinguishing its institutional architecture from Télé Liban’s state-owned company form.

Media assets

Radio: Radio Liban

Ownership and governance

Radio Liban operates as a directorate under the authority of the Ministry of Information, functioning within the government’s official media framework. Unlike Télé Liban, which has a separate state-owned company form with a Chairperson and Board of Directors, Radio Liban has not been constituted as a semi-autonomous public entity and remains embedded within the state’s administrative structure as a Ministry directorate, with limited institutional independence and a corresponding reinforcement of its status as a direct instrument of official communication. According to local media experts consulted by SMM for prior cycles, the Ministry exercises direct oversight over both the broadcaster’s operations and editorial content.

Mohammad Gharib continued as Director of Radio Liban through the 2025/26 SMM review period, working under the oversight of the Ministry of Information. No leadership change at Radio Liban itself was identified during the cycle, in contrast to the major leadership change at Télé Liban with the July 2025 appointment of Dr Elissar Naddaf Geagea as Chairwoman/Director-General. Earlier privatisation proposals for Radio Liban and Télé Liban, including the 2018 advocacy by then-Information Minister Melhem Riachi, did not gain political traction during the cycle, and no structural restructuring or privatisation programme was advanced under the Salam cabinet during the SMM 2025/26 review.

The wider political context for Radio Liban governance during the cycle was reshaped by Lebanon’s political renewal of early 2025: Joseph Aoun was elected President in January 2025 after a more than two-year presidential vacancy, Nawaf Salam was designated Prime Minister and formed a cabinet approved in February 2025, and Paul Morcos was appointed Minister of Information, succeeding Ziad Makary.

Source of funding and budget

Radio Liban is financed through state subsidies from the Ministry of Information, with no significant independent commercial funding source identified by SMM during the 2025/26 review. The broadcaster has been chronically underfunded, struggling to cover even basic operational costs against the backdrop of Lebanon’s wider economic collapse.

No updated standalone Radio Liban 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, and Lebanon’s severe currency devaluation and ongoing fiscal shortfalls during the review window have made the financial position of Radio Liban and other state-funded cultural and information institutions structurally precarious.

Radio Liban does not publish audited financial reports or public budgets disclosing station-specific revenue and expenditure, and the absence of independent audited disclosure for the broadcaster’s operations continued through the SMM 2025/26 review. The cycle produced no structural funding reform: Radio Liban continued to operate as a state-subsidised directorate under the Ministry of Information portfolio, and the operational fragility highlighted by the July 2022 two-day staff strike at state-run media outlets including Radio Liban (over deteriorating working and living conditions amid Lebanon’s financial collapse) remained a defining precedent for the broadcaster’s economic exposure during the cycle.

Editorial independence

Radio Liban’s editorial policy is directly shaped by the Ministry of Information, with the broadcaster’s directorate status ensuring that ministerial direction extends across content production, staffing and day-to-day operations. According to SMM-retained expert sources and media experts consulted during prior cycles, Radio Liban serves primarily as a channel for official narratives rather than a platform for balanced public-service journalism, with the station’s modest audience reach and chronic underfunding limiting both its institutional capacity for independent programming and its prominence in the wider Lebanese media landscape.

The 2025/26 cycle introduced a significant new editorial-direction event applicable to official state media. In March 2026, Information Minister Paul Morcos instructed official media outlets 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. Public reporting highlighted the National News Agency and Télé Liban specifically, but the directive is relevant to Radio Liban as a Ministry-run official media outlet. 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. The directive operationally reinforced executive editorial direction over official-media terminology and treatment of Hezbollah-related content.

No statute or legal instrument guaranteeing the editorial independence of Radio Liban has been identified in Lebanese law, and the broadcaster’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 programming from political interference.

AI and digital policy

Radio Liban has not published a public-facing institutional AI governance policy. No cycle-window AI-tool deployment or generative-AI editorial integration was identified during the SMM 2025/26 review. However, the cycle did include renewed Ministry attention to Radio Liban’s archival and technical condition. In February 2026, Information Minister Paul Morcos inspected the Radio Lebanon archive, reviewed preservation conditions and electronic storage systems, ordered safety upgrades, and directed that the digitisation of the archive be completed in the coming months, with additional work shifts to accelerate completion.

Classification rationale

Radio Liban remains classified as State-Controlled (SC) for the 2026 cycle. The broadcaster operates as a directorate within the Ministry of Information without separate corporate or statutory form, with editorial direction, staffing 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 Radio Liban’s output from government direction; Mohammad Gharib continued as Director of Radio Liban under Ministry of Information oversight throughout the cycle, while the March 2026 official-media directive on treatment of Hezbollah-related content reinforced executive direction over official-media terminology and coverage practice. The broadcaster is state-funded through Ministry of Information subsidies, yet no audited public financial disclosure is available for Radio Liban-specific operations, and chronic underfunding compounded by Lebanon’s wider economic collapse. The 2025/26 cycle produced no governance, funding or editorial reform sufficient to move Radio Liban out of the SC category despite the political renewal in early 2025: the broadcaster continued to function as Lebanon’s official state radio broadcaster 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, executive directives affecting official-media terminology and coverage of Hezbollah-related content, and renewed Ministry attention to the preservation and digitisation of Radio Liban’s archive.

June 2026