Société Nouvelle d’Impression, de Presse et d’Édition (SNIPE)

The Société Nouvelle d’Impression, de Presse et d’Édition (SNIPE), known commercially as SNIPE-La Presse, is a state-managed media publishing company that produces some of Tunisia’s most prominent newspapers, including La Presse de Tunisie, a historic French-language daily founded on 12 March 1936, and Essahafa / Essahafa Alyawm, its Arabic-language counterpart. During the current cycle, SNIPE became the vehicle for the state’s consolidation of the public written press: in December 2025 a ministerial council formally authorised SNIPE-La Presse to acquire and absorb the previously confiscated Dar Assabah press group, bringing the titles of both houses into a single state-managed print pole.

Media assets

Publishing: La Presse de Tunisie and Essahafa / Essahafa Alyawm; Dar Assabah titles being absorbed into SNIPE: Assabah, Le Temps, Assabah Al-Ousboui and Assabah News.

Ownership and governance

SNIPE is structured as a public shareholding company. Its capital is held by the Tunisian state and public institutions, with ownership data recording around 19 percent held directly by the state and the remainder, roughly 81 percent, held by Tunisian public bodies, making the company effectively wholly publicly owned. The company is formally under the tutelage of the Presidency of the Government, and its governance is controlled through executive appointment of the President Director General. This centralised arrangement makes SNIPE a state-managed publishing house rather than an independently governed public-service institution.

Saïd Ben Kraïem was appointed President Director General of SNIPE-La Presse on 19 September 2024 by President Kais Saied, replacing Chokri Ben Nessir, who moved the same day to head the Établissement de la Télévision Tunisienne. A veteran of La Presse, where he had held senior editorial roles, Ben Kraïem had also directed the Centre Africain de Perfectionnement des Journalistes et Communicateurs (CAPJC). He remained in post into 2026, with La Presse identifying him as President Director General in its current masthead and public notices. The executive power to appoint and remove the chief executive is central to the company’s Captured Public classification.

The Dar Assabah merger is the defining governance development of the cycle. President Saied ordered the rescue and merger of the two struggling state-linked press houses after visiting their headquarters on 11 March and 16 June 2023, and repeatedly pressed for the process to be accelerated. On 13 December 2025, a ministerial council chaired by the head of government authorised SNIPE-La Presse to acquire the entirety of Dar Assabah’s shares for the symbolic sum of one dinar and to begin the formal merger by absorption. Dar Assabah, a press group confiscated after 2011 and placed under state-controlled management, is therefore being folded into SNIPE rather than continuing as a separate house.

Source of funding and budget

SNIPE is sustained through a mix of commercial revenue and public support. Historically, advertising, sales, subscriptions and classified advertising formed important parts of its business model, but the collapse of the print market has sharply weakened those revenue streams. Sector studies and media reporting describe SNIPE-La Presse and Dar Assabah as financially distressed institutions whose survival depends on public support, debt management, restructuring and state intervention. The Dar Assabah merger, conducted for a symbolic dinar with the state assuming the restructuring burden, underscores the sector’s dependence on public financing rather than commercial viability, which is itself a marker of state management.

Editorial independence

SNIPE has historically aligned with state narratives, though an independent content review commissioned for this report in 2020 did not find direct evidence of editorial interference at that time, and after the 2011 revolution the company operated a notable practice of having journalists elect their editor-in-chief. That relative latitude has narrowed since President Kais Saied’s exceptional measures began in July 2021. Local journalists and media observers report that SNIPE’s editorial line has increasingly mirrored official positions, and in April 2022 journalists across Tunisia’s public media, including SNIPE-La Presse, joined a strike protesting government interference in editorial affairs.

Saied has publicly called on public media to enlist in what he terms a “national liberation war,” placing state-linked media within a broader official-messaging framework. The wider legal environment, including Decree-Law No. 2022-54 on cyber-offences, has continued to generate prosecutions and custodial sentences for journalists and commentators through 2026. No independent oversight or regulatory body currently safeguards the editorial autonomy of SNIPE’s publications.

AI and digital policy

SMM found no evidence that SNIPE had published a dedicated public AI governance or editorial-use policy as of mid-2026. The company maintains digital editions and online distribution of its titles, and the Dar Assabah merger plan includes digital development and archive digitisation as restructuring priorities. SNIPE has not, however, disclosed 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.

Classification rationale

SNIPE is classified as Captured Public/State-Managed Media (CaPu), a classification maintained from prior SMM cycles and unchanged for 2026. The company is publicly owned, financially dependent on public support and state-led restructuring, and managed by a chief executive appointed and removed through executive decision, with no independent oversight protecting its editorial autonomy. It is not classified State-Controlled because it is structured as a commercial shareholding company with its own commercial revenue and corporate form, but the combination of public ownership, executive appointment power, state-led rescue measures and subsidy dependence places it squarely in the state-managed category. The principal 2026 development is structural rather than typological: the authorised absorption of the confiscated Dar Assabah group consolidates the public written press into a single state-managed pole, deepening rather than altering the CaPu basis.

June 2026