Rastriya Samachar Samiti (RSS)

Rastriya Samachar Samiti (RSS), officially the National News Agency, is Nepal’s state-owned national wire service and its only official domestic news agency. RSS was formed on 18 February 1962 through the merger of two privately owned agencies, Nepal Sambad Samiti and Sagarmatha Sambad Samiti. The National News Agency Act 2019 BS was authenticated on 29 November and published in the Nepal Gazette on 4 December 1962, placing the agency on a statutory footing later that year.

RSS supplies news and other media content to more than 100 subscribing newspapers, radio stations, television channels and online outlets. It operates through permanent and contracted correspondents and maintains a network covering Nepal’s seven provinces and 77 districts.

The agency formally launched a 24-hour Nepali-language news service on 2 September 2024. The service, which had operated on a trial basis since 27 August, was inaugurated by the then Minister for Communications and Information Technology and government spokesperson, Prithvi Subba Gurung. The round-the-clock arrangement applies to the Nepali service rather than necessarily to all RSS products and languages.

Media assets

News services: Nepali and English national news wires; international news; features and analytical content; photo, audio and audiovisual services; and mother-tongue services including Maithili, Nepal Bhasa and Awadhi

Ownership and governance

RSS is a state-owned public enterprise operating under the National News Agency Act 2019 BS and supervised by the ministry responsible for information and communications. The Act formally describes RSS as an autonomous corporate body with perpetual succession. It requires the Government to hold at least 51% of its capital, permits up to 25% to be sold to employees and envisages the remaining shares being available to the public. No current public share register showing that this contemplated ownership diversification has been implemented was located. In practice, RSS operates as a government-owned and government-controlled institution.

The Act establishes a five-member Board comprising:

• the General Manager;
• one representative theoretically elected by non-government shareholders;
• one director nominated by the Government to represent its shares;
• one government nominee drawn from journalism, publishing or literature; and
• one representative theoretically elected by employee shareholders.

Until the shareholder and employee elections can take place, the Government may nominate those directors as well. The Government designates the Board chair, and the General Manager presides if no separate chair has been designated. Pending the creation of a functioning general meeting, the Board is expressly subject to decisions made by the Government.

The General Manager is appointed by the Government. The latest appointment process was competitive in form: the supervising ministry invited applications, assessed candidates through proposed work plans and interviews and submitted a recommendation, after which the Council of Ministers made the final appointment. There is no independent appointments commission or parliamentary confirmation.

Journalist Sandip Rai was appointed General Manager by the Council of Ministers on 11 August 2025 and assumed office on 18 August. He is listed in that capacity on RSS’s official leadership directory. Contemporary reporting on his appointment identified him as a central committee member of Press Chautari Nepal and a former press coordinator to then Physical Infrastructure and Transport Minister Basanta Kumar Nemwang.

Dharmendra Jha, who had served as Executive Chairperson, resigned on 30 March 2026. The Council of Ministers accepted his resignation on 5 April. On 15 April, the communications ministry designated its Joint Secretary, Uday Bahadur Rana Magar, to chair the RSS Board until further arrangements, and he assumed office the following day. Rana Magar stated at the time that he was not a full-time chair and that regular management would continue to operate the agency. He nevertheless exercised the Board chair’s functions and remained publicly identified as RSS chair in July 2026.

RSS was affected by the Public Officials’ Removal Special Provisions Ordinance 2083, issued on 2 May 2026. The ordinance automatically removed pre-26 March appointees holding the positions listed in its schedule. For RSS, the schedule covered the government-share director under Section 8(1)(c) and the government-nominated journalism, publishing or literature representative under Section 8(1)(d). It did not list the General Manager or the RSS chair as a separate office. Rana Magar had also been designated after the ordinance’s appointment cut-off.

The ordinance amended the RSS Act so that the express four-year tenure now applies only to the directors theoretically elected by non-government shareholders and employee shareholders. Government-nominated directors no longer enjoy the same statutory four-year term. It also repealed provisions governing the early replacement and removal of directors. The changes further reduced already limited tenure protection for government appointees.

Source of funding and budget

RSS is financially connected to the state through government ownership, public grants and ministerial oversight of its programmes and finances. It also earns commercial income through subscription and service fees charged to media clients. The Act authorises RSS to set and collect fees for its news products and to accept grants and loans, subject in some circumstances to government approval.

Government grants have funded specific capital and service-development activities. In FY 2023/24, for example, the communications ministry agreed to release NPR 33 million to RSS, including NPR 20 million for its Pokhara building, NPR 10 million for audiovisual services and smaller allocations for equipment and repairs. This establishes receipt of public financing but does not demonstrate that grants account for most of the agency’s total annual income.

No publicly accessible audited statement providing a recent breakdown of RSS income from government grants, subscriptions, service charges and other sources was identified for 2024, 2025 or 2026. In July 2026, RSS General Manager Sandip Rai told a ministry review meeting that the organisation had maintained regular external auditing and was preparing its internal audit. Public availability of those audits could not be established. The precise government share of RSS’s revenue therefore remains unverified.

Editorial independence

The National News Agency Act contains formal editorial duties. It requires RSS to collect and distribute impartial, authentic, unbiased, credible and current news, while also directing it to have regard to the “national viewpoint.” The Act’s preamble refers to public access to impartial and authentic information. These provisions establish statutory professional standards, but they do not create an arm’s-length system for enforcing editorial independence.

Executive control remains extensive. The Government appoints the General Manager, designates the Board chair and nominates at least two directors, and potentially the theoretically elected directors until shareholder elections operate. The Board remains subject to government decisions in the absence of an operative general meeting. The Government can direct RSS to provide, alter, discontinue or refrain from particular services or activities, investigate the agency and dissolve its Board if it considers that the Board has not followed government directions or fulfilled the agency’s objectives.

No publicly accessible standalone editorial charter, independent editorial appointments mechanism, news ombudsman or external body with a specific mandate to audit RSS’s editorial autonomy was identified. The Act’s requirement of impartiality is therefore not accompanied by an institutional firewall separating editorial decisions from the Government and government-appointed management.

Assessments obtained for State Media Monitor from Nepali media experts and journalists in 2023, 2024 and 2025 similarly described RSS output as favouring government narratives and providing limited critical scrutiny of government affairs.

RSS’s institutional position gives its editorial orientation wider significance than the reach of an individual state-owned outlet. More than 100 newspapers, radio stations, television channels and online media subscribe to its services and may reproduce or adapt its material. Any systematic imbalance in the wire service can therefore be carried into privately owned and local media as well as the state sector. This is an inference from the agency’s distribution model rather than evidence that every subscribing outlet republishes RSS material without editorial intervention.

AI and digital policy

RSS distributes its content through its website, subscriber feeds, online archives and associated social-media channels. No publicly accessible RSS-specific editorial policy governing generative artificial intelligence, synthetic media, automated news production, algorithmic editing or disclosure of AI-assisted content was identified.

Classification rationale

RSS is reclassified from State-Controlled (SC) to Captured Public (CaPu) in 2026.

The agency remains firmly under government control in its ownership, governance and editorial structures. The Government appoints the General Manager, designates the Board chair and appoints the government representatives on the Board. It may also fill the seats theoretically reserved for non-government shareholders and employee shareholders until elections for those positions become possible. The Government has statutory powers to direct RSS’s activities, investigate the agency and dissolve its Board. The current Board chair is concurrently a Joint Secretary in the supervising ministry, while the General Manager was appointed by the Council of Ministers through a ministry-administered selection process.

Editorial independence is not effectively protected. Although the National News Agency Act requires RSS to distribute impartial, authentic and unbiased news, these duties are not backed by an independent governing body, enforceable editorial charter, ombudsman or external mechanism capable of auditing editorial autonomy. Expert assessments obtained for State Media Monitor describe RSS output as favouring government narratives, while Reporters Without Borders reports that the agency primarily distributes official information and generally reflects government positions.

The distinction between Captured Public and State-Controlled rests on funding. RSS receives government grants and remains structurally dependent on executive decisions concerning appointments, capital projects and institutional programmes. It also earns income from subscriptions and services supplied to media clients. No publicly accessible audited accounts or other reliable financial evidence were identified establishing that direct state support accounts for at least 50% of its annual budget, the threshold used by the State Media Matrix to classify an outlet as predominantly state-funded.

RSS therefore meets two of the Matrix’s three state-control indicators: it is state-owned or state-governed, and its editorial agenda is subject to government control. Predominant state funding cannot presently be demonstrated. This combination corresponds to the Captured Public model rather than the State-Controlled model.

July 2026