Ho Chi Minh City Press and Radio-Television Agency

The Ho Chi Minh City Press and Radio-Television Agency is the consolidated municipal press and broadcasting body of Vietnam’s largest city, operational from 2 July 2026. It is a public non-business unit of the Ho Chi Minh City Party Committee. It reorganised Sài Gòn Giải Phóng, Tuổi Trẻ and Ho Chi Minh City Radio and Television as subordinate press organisations within a single umbrella body, while eight other city titles were designated for dissolution. The broadcaster already incorporated the former Voice of Ho Chi Minh City’s People, which had been merged into it in August 2025.

Media assets

Television and radio: Ho Chi Minh City Radio and Television (HTV), whose channels include HTV7 and HTV9, together with its digital and cable services operated through HTVC, the TFS television film studio, and the VOH radio centre. Decision 885/QĐ-UBND of August 2025 merged the Voice of Ho Chi Minh City’s People and the Bình Dương and Bà Rịa–Vũng Tàu broadcasters into HTV following that year’s provincial mergers

Newspapers: Sài Gòn Giải Phóng, the city Party Committee’s daily, published in Vietnamese, English and Chinese; and Tuổi Trẻ, reorganised as an electronic newspaper

Other units: a Training and Communications Centre providing professional training, events and communications services, and four functional departments covering the office, editorial secretariat, technology and digital transformation, and planning and investment

The agency has eight subordinate units in total. It is the first time the city has brought print, electronic, radio, television and digital platforms into a single management structure. The three core media organisations continue to operate under their own names as subordinate press organisations rather than being abolished.

Ownership and governance

The Ho Chi Minh City Party Committee issued Decision 863-QĐ/TU on 9 June 2026, taking effect immediately. Its establishment was publicly announced at a conference on 20 June chaired by the standing deputy secretary, Lê Quốc Phong, and attended by officials of the Central Propaganda and Mass Mobilization Commission and the Central Organisation Commission. The reorganised media began operating under the new arrangement on 2 July.

The decision concentrates Party governance of the city’s core municipal press organisations in the Ho Chi Minh City Party Committee. The agency is required to accept the Party Committee Standing Board’s direct, regular and comprehensive leadership, including political and ideological direction of journalistic content. Five press bodies remained outside the restructuring, two religious newspapers and three scientific journals, and Tạp chí Văn nghệ Thành phố Hồ Chí Minh was separately converted into a bulletin.

The scale exceeded Hanoi’s. Eleven press organisations were directly affected, with 2,613 staff. Three were reorganised into the new agency. Eight were designated for dissolution: Người Lao Động, Phụ nữ Thành phố Hồ Chí Minh, Pháp luật Thành phố Hồ Chí Minh, and the magazines Giáo dục Thành phố Hồ Chí Minh, Du lịch Thành phố Hồ Chí Minh, Doanh nhân Sài Gòn, Kinh tế Sài Gòn and Khoa học phổ thông. They ceased publishing on 30 June 2026 and are scheduled formally to end operations on 31 August, once functions, finances and assets have been transferred. Sài Gòn Giải Phóng, Tuổi Trẻ and the broadcaster operated normally until the end of 1 July.

The agency’s stated function follows Regulation 373-QĐ/TW, issued by the Party Secretariat on 23 September 2025, which places provincial and city press and broadcasting agencies directly under the local Party committee. The decision describes the agency as the mouthpiece of the city’s Party organisation, government and people, a bridge between the Party and government on one side and the population on the other, and a forum for the people of Ho Chi Minh City.

Lê Văn Minh, a member of the city Party Committee and previously Party Secretary and People’s Council Chair of Diên Hồng ward, was appointed Director General for a five-year term. An Editorial Council was constituted alongside the executive leadership, with Nguyễn Khắc Văn, acting editor-in-chief of Sài Gòn Giải Phóng and a Deputy Director General, given charge of running it pending the appointment of a chairman. Cao Anh Minh, Trần Xuân Toàn and Tô Đình Tuân, the last of these formerly editor-in-chief of Người Lao Động, were appointed vice-chairmen.

The reorganisation carries explicit targets. The broadcaster was directed to prepare its own restructuring plan, to reduce internal units and staff by at least 20 per cent, to re-evaluate and re-recruit personnel, and to review and consolidate its radio and television channels. The Party Committee has also set an objective of studying the creation of a national flagship press and media group by 2030.

Hanoi adopted the same model five months earlier, merging six city outlets into the Hanoi Press and Radio-Television Agency on 1 February 2026. Both sit alongside the national restructuring of 1 April 2026, when Vietnam Television, Voice of Vietnam and Vietnam News Agency were transferred from the government to the Communist Party Central Committee.

Source of funding and budget

The funding evidence here is more substantial than for any comparable Vietnamese body, and it establishes a high formal level of financial autonomy rather than a revenue split.

Decision 863-QĐ/TU used financial autonomy as its first selection criterion. Bodies at group 1, defined as self-financing both recurrent and investment expenditure, were to be reorganised into the new agency; bodies at group 2, which self-finance recurrent expenditure only, were to be dissolved. Sài Gòn Giải Phóng, Tuổi Trẻ and the broadcaster all held group 1 status.

That category does not mean an absence of public money. Under Decree 60/2021, public service units at the highest autonomy level may still receive state budget funding for commissioned or assigned public services and other specified tasks, and the regime expressly contemplates such units accounting for state-funded services. The decision’s own appendix illustrates the point: the broadcaster is recorded at group 1 while having lost more than 24 billion dong in 2025, with a high loss anticipated for 2026 in the absence of budget support.

Regulation 373-QĐ/TW sets the framework for the merged body, under which agencies of this kind operate as revenue-earning public service units, carry out political tasks assigned, commissioned or tendered by public authorities, and function as first-level budget estimating units of the city budget. The new agency holds that estimating-unit status and was required after its establishment to submit a fresh financial autonomy plan; Decision 863-QĐ/TU records that its post-merger autonomy level remained to be determined.

No consolidated accounts, budget or revenue breakdown has been published for a body that began operating in July 2026. The available evidence establishes a high formal level of financial autonomy among its constituent organisations, but does not establish the proportion of state-origin and commercial income.

Editorial independence

State Media Monitor identified no statutory guarantee of editorial independence for the agency or its titles. The founding decision defines the body as the mouthpiece of the city’s Party organisation, government and people, requires it to accept the Party Committee Standing Board’s direct, regular and comprehensive leadership including political and ideological direction of journalistic content, and Regulation 373-QĐ/TW assigns agencies of this kind information and propaganda functions across print, electronic, radio, television and online channels.

Governance offers no counterweight. The agency was created by the city Party Committee, which appointed its Director General for a fixed five-year term and constituted its Editorial Council. That council sits inside the same structure rather than outside it, and at the time of writing had no chairman. There is no independent governing board, no charter and no external oversight mechanism.

The consolidation narrowed the city’s media landscape considerably. Ho Chi Minh City had seventeen press organisations following the provincial mergers of July 2025. Eight municipal titles were ordered to cease publication in a single step, including prominent specialist and commercially oriented brands such as Kinh tế Sài Gòn, Pháp luật Thành phố Hồ Chí Minh and Doanh nhân Sài Gòn, while control of the three retained core press bodies was consolidated under the Party Committee. Kinh tế Sài Gòn, published in English as the Saigon Times and previously mapped by State Media Monitor as a separate outlet, ceased publication on 30 June 2026 after 35 years.

The national legal framework was rewritten during the review period. On 10 December 2025 the National Assembly passed a new Press Law, number 126/2025/QH15, and a new Cybersecurity Law, number 116/2025/QH15, both in force from 1 July 2026. The Press Law regulates press activity in cyberspace, adds permitted revenue sources for press organisations, and broadens compulsory state access to journalistic sources, expanding the authorities entitled to demand disclosure and removing the previous restriction limiting such demands to very serious and especially serious crimes.

AI and digital policy

Digital transformation is written into the agency’s structure: one of its four functional departments covers technology and digital transformation, and the founding rationale cites investment in press digital transformation and modern media products among its objectives.

Vietnam became the first Southeast Asian country to bring a standalone artificial intelligence law into force. The National Assembly passed Law 134/2025/QH15 on 10 December 2025 and it took effect on 1 March 2026. Article 11 requires providers to mark AI-generated audio, images and video in machine-readable form, requires deployers to notify the public where AI-generated or AI-edited material could cause confusion about the authenticity of events or persons, and requires visible labels on content simulating a real person’s appearance or voice. Decree 142/2026/NĐ-CP, issued on 30 April 2026 and effective from 1 May, provides the implementing detail.

A separate Press Law implementing measure, Decree 237/2026/NĐ-CP, effective 1 July 2026, imposes media-specific duties. Press organisations must verify and review AI-generated or AI-assisted content, assume responsibility for its authenticity and legality, clearly label generated or edited material where it could cause confusion about authenticity, maintain internal review and risk control procedures, and retain relevant activity logs and technical records.

These obligations applied from the agency’s first day of operation. State Media Monitor identified no agency-level editorial policy on generative AI, synthetic media, human verification or disclosure of AI-assisted material.

Classification rationale

The Ho Chi Minh City Press and Radio-Television Agency is classified Captured Public/State-Managed (CaPu). Its constituent organisations were previously classified State-Controlled. The classification is not carried forward: the legal entity, the asset perimeter and the funding perimeter all changed, and the new organisation is assessed on its own evidence.

It is state-operated and Party-governed. The agency was created by decision of the Ho Chi Minh City Party Committee, which appointed its Director General and constituted its Editorial Council, and which concentrated governance of the city’s core press organisations in itself. Regulation 373-QĐ/TW places it directly under that committee. It has no shareholders, no independent governing board and no external oversight mechanism.

Its editorial agenda is directed by the state. The founding decision defines the agency as the mouthpiece of the city’s Party organisation, government and people, and requires it to accept the Party Committee Standing Board’s direct, regular and comprehensive leadership, expressly including political and ideological direction of journalistic content. This is among the most explicitly documented editorial-control provisions in the State Media Monitor dataset.

Predominant state funding is not demonstrated, and this is the condition that places the agency in CaPu rather than State-Controlled. Each of the three core constituent organisations entered the merger at the highest formal financial autonomy level, and Decision 863-QĐ/TU selected them on that basis. That establishes formal autonomy, not a revenue share: units at that level may still receive state funding for commissioned services, the broadcaster was loss-making in 2025 and was anticipated to require budget support in 2026, and the agency’s own post-merger autonomy level remained to be determined. No consolidated accounts have been published, so the proportion of state-origin income cannot be established in either direction.

This distinguishes the Ho Chi Minh City case from Hanoi’s, where the classification rests on an absence of financial disclosure alone. Here there is documented evidence about the constituent organisations, and it is sufficient to show that predominant state funding has not been demonstrated, without supporting the stronger claim that the agency is predominantly commercially financed.

August 2026