Sistema Nacional de Radio y Television Costa Rica (SINART)

SINART is the official operator of Costa Rica’s public media system. It runs the public television service Canal 13 / Canal Trece and the public radio service Radio Nacional, broadcast principally on 101.5 FM and 590 AM, alongside SINART Digital and the Trece Noticias news service. A 2017 brand refresh used the Trece Costa Rica Televisión / 13 Costa Rica TV and Costa Rica Radio identities, but current public-facing SINART materials again foreground Canal Trece / Canal 13 and Radio Nacional. SINART does not currently publish a print title: its historic magazine Contrapunto remains part of the institution’s legal and historical perimeter but, according to SINART’s own history, closed after a brief late-1990s revival. SINART’s programming includes news, educational and cultural broadcasts, music, sports and other public-interest content, and its public radio service carries institutional and public-interest programming, including legislative-session coverage.

Media assets

Television: Canal 13

Radio: Radio Nacional

Ownership and governance

SINART is a state-owned public company, created under Law No. 8346 as the Sistema Nacional de Radio y Televisión Cultural, S.A., with its capital wholly owned by the Costa Rican state. The law gives it a corporate public-company form and places its shareholder assembly in the Council of Government. Its Executive Council has a mixed composition: a president appointed by the Council of Government; a representative of the professional university colleges in the social-sciences field, proposed by the relevant professional federation and appointed by the Council of Government; representatives of the National Council of Rectors (CONARE), the Ministry of Culture and Youth, the Ministry of Public Education, private-university rectors, and the ministries responsible for science, technology and environment; and a Procuraduría-appointed fiscal with voice but no vote. The director general and a staff representative participate with voice but no vote. The Executive Council approves budgets, programming and institutional plans, and appoints the director general; the executive president is the institution’s top authority and may be appointed, reappointed or removed by the Council of Government.

That mixed, multi-stakeholder board, together with SINART’s public-company form and its non-budgetary commercial revenue base, is the structural reason SINART is classified Captured Public/State-Managed rather than State-Controlled. It is publicly owned and ultimately vulnerable to executive influence through the appointment of its top leadership, but it is not designed as a direct organ of a single ministry or state office, and its statute retains formal autonomy and pluralism safeguards.

Leadership has turned over repeatedly. Fernando Sandí Chacón was appointed executive president in March 2023 and resigned in May 2025. Esmirna Sánchez Salmerón was sworn in on 7 May 2025 and led the institution through part of the 2026 cycle. In May 2026, after Laura Fernández Delgado took office as president, the new administration named journalist and communication professional Juan Diego López as SINART’s executive president for the 2026–2030 period. The appointment drew scrutiny because of López’s previous political activity, while the government framed it as based on his media and communication experience.

The wider political context is significant. Fernández took office on 8 May 2026 as the successor aligned with outgoing president Rodrigo Chaves, while Chaves remained in the administration as Minister of the Presidency and Minister of Finance. The change of administration therefore placed SINART’s top leadership within a continuity political project with an unusually strong legislative position.

Source of funding and budget

SINART’s funding model is central to its classification. Its organic law allows state budget transfers, revenue from commercial activities and advertising, donations, and a captive public-advertising mechanism requiring a range of state institutions to place at least 10% of their advertising and information spending through SINART’s advertising agency. Public-company reporting has described a model in which around 70% of revenue comes from commercial and service activity and around 30% from public budget support. That commercial share should not be treated as fully independent of the state, because a significant part of the advertising and services market is tied to public institutions and the statutory 10% mechanism.

The broadcaster has been in sustained financial distress. SINART’s 2024 budget process was disrupted when the Comptroller General rejected a much larger proposed spending plan for inconsistencies, leaving the institution operating on a reduced baseline. Subsequent reporting put the 2025 budget at about CRC 3.29bn, down from about CRC 5.35bn in 2024. Retrenchment was accompanied by an extraordinary restructuring budget approved by the Comptroller General in September 2024 and by layoffs and position cuts intended to adapt the institution to its reduced revenue base. The Minister of Culture and Youth, Jorge Rodríguez Vives, publicly described SINART as too expensive to compete and said a decision on its future would be needed.

In parallel, a 2024 legislative investigation into official advertising alleged that public advertising had been politicised and used to reward or punish media, including through contracts involving SINART’s advertising agency. National media have also published critical investigative coverage of the broadcaster’s budgetary governance.

Editorial independence

An informal content analysis conducted for this project in 2020 found a pattern of friendly interviews with government representatives on SINART’s channels, while still affording space to opposition voices and broadcasting coverage unflattering to the government in a neutral, descriptive tone; no evidence of direct editorial interference was found at that time. Since then, allegations of censorship have grown. Journalists interviewed in April 2023 and May 2024 reported instances of management suppressing specific subjects, and several analysts and politicians have alleged that SINART’s platforms were used to amplify messaging favourable to then-president Chaves and his circle. These pressures continued into the current cycle through leadership turnover, financial retrenchment and scrutiny of state advertising.

Law No. 8346 incorporates formal safeguards intended to protect the broadcaster’s autonomy. It requires SINART to observe objectivity, truthfulness and impartiality, to separate information from opinion, to respect political, religious, social and cultural pluralism, and to provide diverse and balanced programming. It also prohibits SINART from engaging in political activities or propaganda, subject to defined exceptions for news, debates, public-service messages, electoral programming and paid political advertising. SINART also maintains internal ethics and style guidance. In practice, however, no external independent oversight body regularly assesses editorial independence, and the combination of government-appointed top leadership, state-linked advertising revenue and financial dependence leaves the statutory safeguards weakly enforced.

AI and digital policy

SMM found no evidence that SINART has published a dedicated public AI governance or editorial-use policy as of mid-2026.

At the national level, Costa Rica is among the region’s more active states on AI governance. In October 2024 the Ministry of Science, Innovation, Technology and Telecommunications (MICITT) launched the National Artificial Intelligence Strategy (ENIA) 2024-2027, the first dedicated public AI policy in Central America, aligned with the UNESCO Recommendation on the Ethics of AI and OECD principles, and the country has acted as co-facilitator, alongside Spain, of the United Nations process on global AI governance. Several AI bills remain at an early stage in the Legislative Assembly. This national framework sets the policy backdrop for SINART but does not constitute an outlet-level editorial AI policy.

At outlet level, SINART’s digital development has centred on the Sinart Digital portal, the Trece Noticias news service, the Canal Trece live signal and social distribution, together with technology-focused programming such as Código 13. SINART has also begun using AI in its digital output: news items published on its platforms in 2025 carried image credits indicating visuals generated with AI. However, SMM found no published SINART framework governing AI use in editorial decision-making, verification, attribution, recommendation systems, audience analytics, synthetic-media labelling, content disclosure, bias mitigation or human editorial oversight. AI use therefore appears to be operational and ad hoc rather than governed by a disclosed editorial policy.

Classification rationale

SINART is retained as Captured Public/State-Managed (CaPu) for 2026. It is fully state-owned, headed by a government-appointed executive president, vulnerable to government influence through leadership, budget and state-linked advertising, and lacks independent enforcement of editorial autonomy. It is not classified State-Controlled because its statutory architecture remains distinct from direct executive organs: it is a public company with a mixed Executive Council, its own commercial and service revenue base, and formal pluralism and autonomy principles in its organic law. The 2025–2026 developments, leadership turnover, budget retrenchment, politicised-advertising allegations and continuing censorship concerns, represent stronger capture within the same structure rather than a clear structural transition to State-Controlled status.

June 2026