Tunis Afrique Presse (TAP)

Founded on 1 January 1961, Tunis Afrique Presse (TAP) is Tunisia’s official national news agency. With a workforce of more than 300 staff, including journalists, photographers and other media personnel, it delivers domestic, regional and international coverage and supplies content to both state-owned and private media, making it a central node in the country’s information ecosystem. During the current cycle, the agency expanded its multimedia and sustainability profile: it continued to develop audiovisual production through its TAP TV studio and, in April 2026, inaugurated a photovoltaic plant at its headquarters, becoming the first Tunisian public media institution to adopt such a sustainable-energy model.

Media assets

News agency: TAP

Ownership and governance

TAP operates as Tunisia’s official public news agency. Although the agency was established in the legal form of a société anonyme, in practice it is a state-owned and state-funded institution whose chief executive is appointed through executive decision. This arrangement places the agency under central government control rather than under an independent public-service governance framework.

Najeh Missaoui was appointed President Director General of TAP by Decree No. 2023-266 of 17 March 2023. A senior journalist and former grand reporter at the Établissement de la Télévision Tunisienne, with a doctorate in information and political sciences, he remained in post into 2026, representing the agency at official events and partnerships during the year. The executive power to appoint and remove the chief executive, without an independent regulatory check, is central to the agency’s State-Controlled classification.

TAP has also played a regional institutional role in news-agency cooperation. It held the rotating presidency of the Alliance of Mediterranean News Agencies (AMAN) for a one-year mandate from May 2023, after hosting the organisation’s 31st General Assembly in Djerba. That presidency passed to Italy’s ANSA at the 32nd AMAN General Assembly in Palermo in June 2024.

Source of funding and budget

TAP’s operating budget relies heavily on public funding. According to local media experts interviewed for this report in May 2024 and March 2025, between 80% and 90% of its income is drawn from the state, with the remainder generated through the commercial sale of editorial content, including wire news, multimedia material and photographs. Older public reporting and media-ownership research similarly describe TAP as overwhelmingly dependent on state budget support, with only a limited share of revenue coming from subscriptions and photo services. This heavy dependence on state financing, combined with the agency’s limited commercial base, leaves it structurally reliant on the executive that funds and appoints it.

Editorial independence

TAP was long regarded, especially after the 2011 revolution, as one of the more professionally autonomous institutions in the Tunisian public-media sector. That autonomy has been increasingly called into question since President Kais Saied’s exceptional measures of July 2021 expanded executive powers and weakened institutional checks.

The agency has been subjected to tighter editorial constraints. In April 2022, journalists across Tunisia’s public media, including TAP, launched a coordinated strike protesting attempts by the authorities to control public media’s editorial line. Ahead of the October 2024 presidential election, TAP was spotlighted for censoring a dispatch concerning Mondher Zenaïdi, a declared rival of President Saied. The National Union of Tunisian Journalists (SNJT) raised the alarm, stating that the agency’s chief executive had given instructions to suppress the report and that coverage of a press conference concerning Abir Moussi had also been cancelled by editorial management. Saied secured a second term on 6 October 2024 with more than 90% of the vote, on turnout of 28.8%, amid an opposition boycott and a heavily constrained electoral environment.

The wider legal environment compounds the pressure. Decree-Law No. 2022-54 on cyber-offences, used to prosecute journalists, commentators and critics for “false news” and related speech offences, continued to generate prosecutions and custodial sentences through 2026. No domestic statute or independent oversight mechanism currently safeguards or evaluates TAP’s editorial independence.

AI and digital policy

SMM found no evidence that TAP had published a dedicated public AI governance or editorial-use policy as of mid-2026. The agency has expanded its digital and audiovisual production, including through the TAP TV studio and active web and social distribution, but it has not 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

TAP is classified as State-Controlled (SC), a classification maintained from prior SMM cycles and unchanged for 2026. The agency is publicly owned, predominantly state-funded, and run by a chief executive appointed and removed through executive decision, with no independent oversight protecting its editorial autonomy. While its founding legal form is a société anonyme, the combination of overwhelming state funding, executive appointment power and documented editorial interference, including the 2024 election-period censorship episode, places it within the State-Controlled category rather than the captured-public one. All three State Media Matrix determinants, ownership, funding and editorial control, point to the state, and the erosion of the agency’s former editorial autonomy during recent cycles has deepened that control.

June 2026