Solomon Islands Broadcasting Corporation (SIBC)

The Solomon Islands Broadcasting Corporation (SIBC) is the national public broadcasting organisation of the Solomon Islands, established by the Broadcasting Act 1976 as an independent statutory authority that commenced operations in January 1977. SIBC’s broadcasting roots trace to wartime and post-war radio services in the British Solomon Islands, before the colonial-era Solomon Islands Broadcasting Service was replaced by SIBC under the 1976 Act. SIBC operates today as the country’s principal national public broadcaster across the archipelago’s roughly 900 islands and a population of around 0.75 to 0.82 million people, depending on which World Bank or UN estimate is used. SIBC operates four radio stations, two with nationwide reach (Radio Happy Isles and Wantok FM) and two regional services (Radio Happy Lagoon in Western Province and Radio Temotu in Temotu Province), alongside the SIBC TV Service launched on 17 November 2023, with plans to expand to a full free-to-air television operation by 2028 to coincide with the 50th anniversary of Solomon Islands independence.

Media assets

Radio: Radio Happy Isles, Wantok FM, Radio Happy Lagoon, Radio Temotu

Television: SIBC TV Service

Ownership and governance

SIBC was instituted under the Broadcasting Act 1976 as a public-service broadcaster and was placed under the State-Owned Enterprise (SOE) Act in 2007. On 27 June 2022, the Government of Solomon Islands removed SIBC from the SOE list, with the Office of the Prime Minister and Cabinet at the time describing the change as an effort to encourage greater commercial self-reliance rather than a censorship measure. SIBC’s own current institutional description characterises the change as a transition “from a profit-oriented entity to a National Broadcaster operating directly under the Office of the Prime Minister and Cabinet (OPMC)”. The Board of Directors reports to the Prime Minister, who serves as the responsible minister, alongside the Board’s relationship with the Minister of Finance and Treasury for funding purposes.

The current Chair of the SIBC Board is Solomon Kalu, and the Chief Executive Officer is Johnson Honimae BEM, who presented SIBC’s Strategic Plan 2026 to 2030 to then-Prime Minister Jeremiah Manele on 5 March 2026. The Strategic Plan, developed with support from the New Zealand Government, sets out priorities for strengthening national broadcasting services, including the proposed upgrade of the AM 1035 transmission system at Henderson, which currently operates at approximately half its design capacity.

The 2025/26 cycle saw substantial political instability in the Solomon Islands. Prime Minister Jeremiah Manele of the OUR Party, who had taken office on 2 May 2024 following the April 2024 general election, survived a first motion of no confidence in April 2025. A second crisis began in March 2026, when more than a dozen ministers and MPs defected from Manele’s Government of National Unity and Transformation coalition. After an Appeal Court ruling required Manele to convene Parliament, a no-confidence motion succeeded on 7 May 2026, and Matthew Wale of the Solomon Islands Democratic Party was elected Prime Minister by the National Parliament on 15 May 2026 and sworn in the same day. Francis Sade was appointed Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Public Service on 16 May 2026. As the Wale government took office only weeks before the close of this review period, its approach to SIBC governance and the OPMC arrangement is not yet established.

Source of funding and budget

SIBC’s operations are sustained through a combination of government grants and commercial advertising revenue. The annual government subvention grant for SIBC’s national broadcaster operations is currently SBD 5 million, as confirmed by SIBC’s Chief Executive in the 5 March 2026 Strategic Plan presentation to the Prime Minister. This represents a substantial increase on the SBD 1 million annual grant cited in previous SMM cycles and reflects the post-2022 reclassification of SIBC as a National Broadcaster requiring direct OPMC support rather than as a commercially focused SOE. Earlier government interventions included a one-time SBD 5 million injection in February 2023 to bolster local and international broadcasting capacity. SIBC has also previously received Community Service Obligation payments to compensate for the provision of emergency information and other public-interest services where advertising revenue does not cover costs. The Saudi-government-backed initiative of approximately SBD 18.5 million that funded the November 2023 launch of the SIBC TV Service remains the principal capital basis for the broadcaster’s television operations. No standalone SIBC financial statement detailing the precise current revenue mix between government grants, commercial advertising and donor capital was identified in this review.

Editorial independence

SIBC has historically enjoyed public trust as a national broadcaster, and a 2024 content analysis by the Media and Journalism Research Center did not find overt bias favouring authorities in its output. However, concerns about editorial pressure have intensified since the 2022 restructuring placing SIBC under direct OPMC authority. The International Federation of Journalists reported in August 2022 that the Prime Minister’s Office had ordered SIBC to censor anti-government voices, with then-acting Board chairman William Parairato outlining new guidelines on 29 July 2022 requiring both news and paid programmes to be vetted in line with government regulations; SIBC Chief Executive Johnson Honimae told the Associated Press at the time that the Prime Minister’s Office had raised the issue of “disunity” in several telephone calls and believed SIBC had been “running too many stories from the opposition side”. The IFJ described the move as “an assault on press freedom” and called for “the immediate reinstatement of independent broadcasting arrangements”. SMM has closely watched SIBC since 2022 for evidence of further censorship. Reporters Without Borders, in a dedicated March 2026 analysis of the Solomon Islands media sector, characterised the 2022 SIBC restructuring as having placed the broadcaster “under the direct authority of the Prime Minister’s Office”, and reported that the restructuring “was accompanied by disturbing instructions to censor content critical of the government”. The Office of the Prime Minister and Cabinet has denied such characterisations and maintained that SIBC continues to operate under the Broadcasting Act with editorial independence preserved.

Solomon Islands is not currently included in the Reporters Without Borders World Press Freedom Index, with RSF’s 2026 Pacific coverage limited to Australia, Fiji, Samoa, Tonga, Papua New Guinea and New Zealand. RSF stated that this reflects capacity constraints rather than an absence of press-freedom relevance in the country. The broader Solomon Islands media landscape includes the privately owned dailies Solomon Star and Island Sun; RSF’s March 2026 analysis reported that both newspapers had received Chinese funding and characterised the country’s media landscape as facing structural economic difficulties. Tensions around the Solomon Islands government’s closer relationship with China since 2019 have been a persistent feature of the editorial environment in which SIBC operates, including reported pressure during the Manele administration on coverage of China-related stories.

AI and digital policy

SIBC maintains a digital presence through its institutional website (sibconline.com.sb), Mixlr streaming, and standard social-media channels. No published SIBC policy on AI-generated content, synthetic-media disclosure or content-provenance frameworks such as C2PA was identified in this review. At national level, no Solomon Islands-specific AI law or public-sector generative-AI framework comparable to those in Australia or New Zealand was identified. National digital-policy priorities have focused more on telecommunications infrastructure, including the 2022 Chinese-financed mobile tower expansion, than on generative-AI governance for public-service broadcasting.

Classification rationale

SIBC is reclassified as State-Controlled (SC) for the 2026 cycle, transitioning from the Independent State-Funded and State-Managed (ISFM) classification that applied in 2022, 2023, 2024 and 2025. The reclassification is grounded in the accumulated weight of evidence across the three SC criteria.

On ownership and governance, the 27 June 2022 removal of SIBC from the State-Owned Enterprise list placed the broadcaster directly under the authority of the Office of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, with the Prime Minister serving as the responsible minister rather than the arm’s-length governance arrangements that previously applied under the SOE Act. SIBC’s own current institutional description characterises the change as a transition “from a profit-oriented entity to a National Broadcaster operating directly under the Office of the Prime Minister and Cabinet (OPMC)”, and the Strategic Plan 2026 to 2030 was presented directly to the Prime Minister rather than through a separate ministerial channel. While SIBC retains separate legal personality under the Broadcasting Act 1976 and a formal Board structure, the post-2022 arrangement places governance in substantively the same direct executive relationship that characterises other SC outlets.

On funding, the SBD 5 million annual subvention grant from the OPMC is now central to SIBC’s operating model rather than a supplementary contribution, reflecting the post-2022 redefinition of SIBC as a National Broadcaster requiring direct government support rather than a commercially focused SOE. No standalone SIBC financial statement detailing a sustainable independent revenue base was identified in this review, and the broadcaster’s capital infrastructure depends materially on direct government grants and external donor capital, including the SBD 18.5 million Saudi-government-backed funding for the November 2023 SIBC TV Service launch.

On editorial independence, two separate international press-freedom organisations have reported government instructions to censor SIBC content critical of the government, across two different government administrations. The IFJ in August 2022 reported the Prime Minister’s Office had ordered SIBC to censor anti-government voices, with SIBC’s own Chief Executive Johnson Honimae confirming to the Associated Press that the Prime Minister’s Office had raised concerns about “disunity” and that the broadcaster had been “running too many stories from the opposition side”. RSF in March 2026 reported “disturbing instructions to censor content critical of the government”. The 2024 Media and Journalism Research Center content analysis, which had previously supported the ISFM classification on observed-output grounds, predates the most recent RSF reporting and is no longer sufficient on its own to offset the cumulative documented institutional pressure across two government administrations.

June 2026