Antara

Antara is Indonesia’s national news agency and a major supplier of news to Indonesian media and international clients. It was established on 13 December 1937, during the Dutch colonial period, and has operated through successive political regimes and institutional reforms. Its national news agency status derives from Presidential Decision No. 307 of 1962, amended by Presidential Decision No. 85 of 1966. Antara reported a workforce of 865 employees as of October 2024.

Media assets

News agency: Antara News

Ownership and governance

Antara was reconstituted as a state-owned enterprise by Government Regulation No. 40/2007, taking the form of a Perusahaan Umum (Perum), a public corporation whose capital is wholly state-owned and not divided into shares, distinct from the Persero form used for commercial state companies.

Governance derives from the state as owner of the company’s capital. Under PP No. 40/2007, both the Board of Directors and the Supervisory Board are appointed and dismissed by the state owner; the Supervisory Board does not appoint the Directors. These powers are currently exercised through the BUMN regulatory body, BP BUMN, following Indonesia’s restructuring of state-enterprise oversight — earlier appointments, in 2023 and 2024, were made by the Ministry of State-Owned Enterprises.

Leadership changed comprehensively at the start of 2026. By Decision No. 16 of 2026, dated 5 January, Benny Siga Butarbutar was appointed Director Utama, replacing Akhmad Munir; the same decision appointed Virgandhi Prayudantoro as News Director and Rachmat Hidayat as Commercial, Business Development and IT Director. Aria Bimo Setyo Pramono subsequently became Finance and Risk Management Director under Decision No. 123 of 2026. Akhmad Munir is the current Chair of the Supervisory Board.

According to Antara’s own published biography, Butarbutar began his career at the agency in 1993, served as its Tokyo bureau chief from 2006 to 2009, and subsequently held corporate communications roles at Citilink and Garuda Indonesia and an advisory role at Bulog. From October 2025 he served as Deputy I of the Government Communications Agency (Badan Komunikasi Pemerintahan RI), before returning to Antara as Director Utama in January 2026.

In March 2025, Komisi I of the DPR received a proposal from the Ministry of Communication and Digital Affairs to merge TVRI, RRI and Antara into a unified multiplatform public institution. Antara has not been explicitly included in the draft RTRI legislation, owing to its different institutional form as a Perum rather than a public broadcasting institution.

Source of funding and budget

Antara’s financing differs structurally from that of TVRI and RRI. Where those bodies receive direct state budget allocations, Antara receives public funds through a Public Service Obligation (PSO) scheme alongside commercial revenue.

Antara is not predominantly financed through its PSO allocation. In 2025, audited operating revenue totalled IDR 500.47 billion, of which IDR 180.67 billion, about 36%, derived from the PSO/news segment, while IDR 300.70 billion, about 60%, came from commercial operations and IDR 19.09 billion from its AETP subsidiary. Commercial income therefore formed the largest revenue component. A single partnership with Bloomberg accounted for approximately IDR 185.64 billion of that commercial revenue in 2025.

For 2026, planning documents anticipate a PSO indicative allocation of about IDR 182.1 billion against projected commercial revenue of about IDR 390.8 billion, maintaining the same balance.

One methodological question remains open. SMM’s methodology counts state advertising and other disguised state funding towards the state-funding threshold. Antara’s commercial clients include a substantial number of state bodies: its audited 2025 report records 222 cooperation portfolios with ministries and agencies and 54 with state-owned enterprises, alongside 126 non-state portfolios and two foreign news-agency partnerships. That report does not provide a revenue-value breakdown showing how much of the IDR 300.70 billion in commercial income derived from state clients. State Media Monitor therefore additionally considers the extent to which such transactions constitute state-origin funding under its methodology.

Editorial independence

For much of its history Antara operated as a government mouthpiece. Commercial pressure and competition in a more pluralistic market prompted tentative moves towards greater editorial autonomy in recent decades, but those gains have stalled or reversed.

A content analysis carried out in March 2024 by the Media and Journalism Research Center found a marked increase in government-aligned coverage, with the large majority of output focused on state activities and messaging. Journalists in Jakarta interviewed in June 2024 said critical reporting on the authorities had become virtually non-existent within the agency. Antara has also been scrutinised for disseminating Chinese state-sponsored content, reflecting wider concerns about Beijing’s media influence in Southeast Asia. On that basis Antara was reclassified in 2024 from Independent State-Managed (ISM) to Captured Public (CaPu).

The evidence of editorial alignment strengthened further in 2026. Antara’s new Director Utama moved to the agency after serving from October 2025 as Deputy I of Indonesia’s Government Communications Agency. More consequentially, Antara’s own 2026 statements explicitly link its news agenda to government priorities. In June, Butarbutar told parliament that Antara’s news performance was generally organised around the Asta Cita programme of President Prabowo Subianto, and described special disaster coverage as intended partly to counter attacks on the government circulating through social and non-established media. Earlier in the year, he said Antara would support the government’s vision, mission and flagship programmes as part of a wider “state information ecosystem,” envisaging cooperation with RRI and TVRI on issues central to state interests.

Government statements point in the same direction. At Antara’s national work meeting in June 2026, Communications and Digital Affairs Minister Meutya Hafid called on the agency to safeguard national priorities and said she expected its journalists to translate the government’s development vision into factual narratives understandable to the public. The PSO mechanism reinforces the connection: Antara and the ministry formally launched the 2026 PSO in April, with Antara stating it would focus on narratives around food sovereignty, energy and productive and inclusive economic policy, and the Asta Cita agenda had already been described as forming part of its government PSO assignment.

These statements, together with the 2024 content analysis and journalist interviews documenting the decline of critical reporting, constitute substantially stronger evidence of systematic state alignment than the leadership appointment alone.

Antara has adopted internal protocols intended to improve corporate integrity, including a Good Corporate Governance framework, a Code of Conduct and a whistleblowing system to protect staff from retaliation. These are directed at financial accountability and administrative transparency rather than at safeguarding editorial autonomy.

AI and digital policy

Antara already uses artificial intelligence in newsroom operations. Its audited 2025 management report states that ChatGPT is used in the international newsroom to assist with correction of Indonesian–English translations, and AI forms part of the agency’s wider technology-development agenda.

State Media Monitor nevertheless identified no publicly accessible Antara-specific editorial policy setting out rules for generative AI, synthetic media, human verification, attribution or disclosure of AI-generated material to audiences.

Classification rationale

Antara remains classified Captured Public / State-Managed/Owned (CaPu), the Matrix model for outlets that are state-owned and editorially controlled but not predominantly state-funded.

It is state-owned and state-governed. Antara is a Perum, a public corporation whose capital is wholly state-owned, constituted by Government Regulation No. 40/2007, under which both its Directors and its Supervisory Board are appointed and dismissed by the state owner, currently through BP BUMN.

Its editorial agenda is subject to state control, and the evidence for this is stronger in 2026 than when the outlet was reclassified in 2024. The chain runs: state ownership; direct state appointment of the entire governance structure; a Director Utama arriving from the Government Communications Agency; a PSO explicitly structured around government communication priorities; the chief executive publicly describing the 2026 news agenda around the Asta Cita programme and framing disaster coverage as a counterweight to criticism of the government; a government minister telling the agency to translate the government’s development vision into its narratives; and prior content analysis and journalist interviews documenting the loss of critical coverage.

On funding, Antara is not predominantly financed through direct state allocation. Audited 2025 operating revenue was IDR 500.47 billion, of which about 36% came through the PSO and about 60% from commercial operations, with the Bloomberg partnership alone accounting for roughly IDR 185.6 billion. This is what distinguishes Antara from TVRI and RRI, whose funding is drawn overwhelmingly from the state budget.

August 2026