State Media Monitor
The State Media Matrix
State Media Monitor classifies every state and public media entry by three factors: who funds it, who owns and governs it, and who controls its editorial line. How the three combine places each entry in one of seven categories, from State-Controlled to Independent Public.
Three factors
Telling State-Controlled outlets apart from independent public service media is not enough to understand how state and public media work, or how their performance shifts with politics and economics. Five other models sit between those poles. The Matrix separates all seven with three questions, and a safeguard counts only where it is applied in practice.
Funding
Is the outlet predominantly funded by the state?
State and public media usually rely on public money, and some also earn commercial revenue. Direct state support, such as government subsidies or state advertising, creates dependency: the larger its share of the budget, the weaker the outlet’s independence.
In the Matrix: predominantly state-funded means direct state support of at least half of the annual budget.
Ownership and governance
Does the state own the outlet or appoint its governing bodies?
Most state media are owned by the government, and politicised appointments to governing boards are a powerful instrument of control. Where supervisory bodies are appointed by a broader set of actors, state control is weaker.
In the Matrix: majority government ownership, or a board majority appointed by the government on political grounds.
Editorial control
Does the state, or an actor linked to it, control the editorial line?
The hardest factor to assess. Editorial control exists when journalists cannot take editorial decisions independently, because of internal levers such as funding and ownership, or external pressure from officials, allied businesses and politicians.
Safeguards that count: editorial statutes that bind management, and independent oversight such as ombudspersons, programme councils and complaints mechanisms.
The matrix
Editorial control divides the seven categories into two families. Within each family, funding and ownership decide the category. Select a category to see its definition, how it scores on the three factors, its 2026 entries and examples, or answer the three questions to place an outlet.
Reading the matrix
Figures are for the 2026 cycle, which maps 588 entries in 168 jurisdictions.
Two poles
State-Controlled media, the most widespread model, account for 367 of the 588 entries. Independent Public media, built to serve the public with funding and governance kept out of the government’s reach, number 18, 12 of them in Europe.
Five hybrids
Three hybrids keep their editorial autonomy despite state funding, state ownership or both. Two captured models have their editorial line controlled by the state without the full State-Controlled combination: Captured Public media, which the state governs without predominantly funding them, and Captured Private media, which it does not own at all.
Capture without ownership
The 47 Captured Private entries cluster in a few countries: Serbia and Turkey, which hold all 13 in Europe, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards-linked titles, Cambodia, Tanzania and Russia. Capture can also unravel: after Hungary’s change of government in April 2026, nine Hungarian entries, eight of them Captured Private, left the mapping because the state links behind their classification had changed or largely disappeared.
How classifications change
Each entry is assessed against the three factors in every cycle, using annual reports, legal acts, financial records, media and NGO reporting, academic research and interviews. New accounts, appointment records, corporate filings or a change of government can move an entry to another category, or out of the mapping, without any change in its editorial behaviour. The typology was first published on State Media Monitor in May 2022.
Apply the typology
See how every outlet is categorized.
The seven models above map onto real broadcasters, agencies and publishers worldwide. To find the category assigned to any individual state or public media outlet in this project, search the Global List.
Search the Global List