Radio Television Malaysia (RTM)

Radio Televisyen Malaysia, formally the Department of Broadcasting Malaysia, is the country’s national broadcaster and its oldest, established on 1 April 1946 as Radio Malaya under British colonial administration. Radio Malaya became Radio Malaysia after the federation was formed in September 1963, television began on 28 December that year, and the two arms merged under the RTM name in 1969. Its headquarters is Angkasapuri in Kuala Lumpur.

Media assets

Television: TV1, TV2, TV Okey, Berita RTM, Sukan RTM, TV6, Dewan Rakyat, Dewan Negara

Radio: National- Radio Klasik, Nasional FM, Asyik FM, TraXX FM, Ai FM, Minnal FM; Regional- KL FM, Selangor FM, Sabah V FM, Sarawak FM, Labuan FM, Kedah FM, Kelantan FM, Terengganu FM, Pahang FM, Johor FM, Negeri FM, Perak FM, Mutiara FM, Perlis FM, Melaka FM, Sabah FM; Local- Wai FM, Red FM, Langkawi FM, Limbang FM, Miri FM, Sri Aman FM, Bintulu FM, Sibu FM, Sandakan FM, Tawau FM, Keningau FM

Ownership and governance

RTM operates as a federal government department under the Ministry of Communications rather than as a separately constituted statutory public broadcaster. No independent governing board, charter or arm’s-length structure between the broadcaster and the executive was identified, and its staff are civil servants. The ministry took its current form in December 2023, when the Ministry of Communications and Digital was divided into a Ministry of Communications and a separate Ministry of Digital; RTM falls under the former, whose minister is Fahmi Fadzil.

The sectoral legal framework is the Communications and Multimedia Act 1998 (Act 588), which came into force on 1 April 1999 and repealed the Broadcasting Act 1988 together with the Telecommunications Act 1950. It established a convergence regulatory model administered by the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission and confers substantial ministerial powers over the sector. Parliament passed further amendments to the communications and MCMC legislation in July and August 2026; these concern the wider regulatory framework and do not alter RTM’s status as a government department.

Leadership changed during the review period. On 23 February 2026 the Communications Minister announced the appointment of Ashwad Ismail as Director-General of Broadcasting, succeeding Datuk Suhaimi Sulaiman, who had ended his service after nearly three years. Ashwad came to RTM from Astro Awani, where he was Editor-in-Chief; his predecessor had followed the same route from the same commercial broadcaster. That pattern brings commercial newsroom leadership into a government department, which distinguishes RTM from state broadcasters that promote from within the bureaucracy. It does not change the appointment mechanism: the post is a senior federal government appointment, and no independent nominating process, fixed term or protected tenure was identified.

Assessments obtained for State Media Monitor from local media experts and RTM journalists in March 2024 and May 2025 indicate that officials engage routinely with RTM’s editorial leadership, particularly during election periods, national crises and major policy launches.

Source of funding and budget

RTM is financed directly through the federal budget as a government department, and its allocation is itemised in Malaysia’s published expenditure estimates rather than in any broadcaster’s annual report.

The Federal Expenditure Estimates for 2026 allocate RM472,847,800 to activity 020500, Penyiaran (RTM), against RM527,871,800 for 2025, a reduction of about 10.4%. The same document provides for 4,305 established positions in both years. Within the 2026 figure, emoluments account for RM225.83 million and services and supplies for RM183.51 million, while the assets line falls from RM132.41 million to RM58.90 million, which accounts for most of the year-on-year reduction.

Development expenditure is recorded separately. Eleven project lines relate directly to RTM, totalling approximately RM151 million for 2026. The largest are RM87.98 million for high-definition digital television broadcasting systems, RM20.9 million for the Angkasapuri integrated network system and RM12.26 million for staff housing at district stations, alongside broadcasting buildings at Bintulu, Langkawi and Tawau, radio automation equipment, FM transmission upgrades and a digital shortwave transmitter system. A further one-off ministry allocation of RM66.94 million for television broadcasting programmes appears under the ministry’s one-off provisions.

Separately, the Deputy Communications Minister told Parliament in November 2025 that RM650 million was expected to be used in 2026 for the development and purchase of local content, against RM114 million paid to 234 production companies in 2025 and RM89 million to 318 companies in 2024. That figure exceeds RTM’s entire operating allocation, and SMM could not reconcile it against the published estimates; it may draw on development and creative-industry provisions across the ministry rather than on RTM’s own line.

RTM generates supplementary income from advertising and sponsorship, and SMM identified no current primary source establishing the treatment of those receipts. The point does not affect the funding finding: RTM is financed as a government department through the federal expenditure system, which places state funding well beyond the Matrix threshold irrespective of commercial income. RTM does not publish standalone audited financial statements from which its complete revenue and expenditure structure could be independently reconstructed.

Editorial independence

Two forms of institutional evidence establish the editorial-control finding, and both are documentary rather than inferential.

The first is budgetary. RTM is not a standalone budget head but Activity 020500 within the ministry’s Programme 2, “Strategic Communication and Creative Industry”, alongside the Department of Information (JaPen) and Bernama. That programme’s published outcome indicators include the percentage effectiveness of delivering government information in grassroots nationhood engagement programmes, recorded at 91.20% for 2024 against a target of 90.00% for both 2025 and 2026. RTM’s stated activity functions are disseminating information across broadcast platforms, catalysing the national creative content industry, supporting Malaysian heritage and culture, and expanding strategic cooperation networks. The broadcaster is budgeted, measured and reported as an instrument of government strategic communication.

The second is RTM’s own Broadcasting Code of Ethics (Kod Etika Penyiaran), published on RTM’s servers. Its stated scope covers producers, directors, programme suppliers, advertisers, announcers, journalists, presenters, newsreaders and anyone else involved in RTM broadcasting, so it reaches news personnel directly. The Code identifies RTM as a government broadcasting channel, requires production to take account of prevailing government policies, resolves interpretive ambiguity through the Director-General, and describes RTM programming in terms of conveying government messaging, including the formulation that every RTM programme functions as an ambassador for the delivery of government messages. Parts of the document reflect an earlier drafting period, including references to Wawasan 2020 and a television-production section dated to 2003, and the version accessible in 2026 has not been comprehensively revised. RTM’s 2026 programme-procurement materials nonetheless direct suppliers to comply with it.

The Code is not an editorial-independence safeguard. It is an internal instrument that embeds government messaging in production standards and routes final interpretation to the department head. No statutory guarantee of editorial independence for RTM, and no institutional firewall protecting news decisions from executive direction, was identified.

Accountability and the Malaysian Media Council

Malaysia established a statutory framework for media self-regulation during this cycle. The Malaysian Media Council Bill was passed by the Dewan Rakyat on 26 February 2025, following roughly five decades of campaigning by journalists and media bodies, and the Act came into force on 14 June 2025. It provides for a 21-member board drawn from media companies, media associations, practitioners and non-media members, including two government representatives nominated by the Communications Ministry, with a chair barred from political office, the civil service and the legislature.

The Council became operationally significant during 2026. On 22 January it opened its complaints mechanism, administered by its Code of Conduct and Complaints Committee and described as independent, transparent and non-punitive, with member organisations also required to establish internal complaints procedures. A second phase ran from 8 April to 30 September 2026. In July the Prime Minister directed that complaints against journalists from recognised media organisations be referred to the Council before any investigation or enforcement action, a step the Council’s deputy chairman described as an important milestone for independent self-regulation.

The Council’s relevance to RTM is contextual rather than structural. It is an industry self-regulatory body operating over its members, and it does not appoint RTM’s leadership, govern its budget or create an editorial firewall within the broadcaster. RTM does not appear among the Council’s organisational members, while RTM’s Director-General sits on the Council’s board as one of the two government representatives, alongside Bernama’s chief executive. State media is represented on the self-regulator rather than regulated by it.

SMM identified no RTM-specific enforceable editorial-independence charter, ombudsman, audience council or independent third-party audit of editorial performance.

AI and digital policy

RTM has moved from discussion of artificial intelligence to operational deployment. It used AI-generated avatars in an Aidilfitri public service announcement in March 2025 and repeated the approach in 2026, publishes imagery carrying AI-generation labels, and its Berita RTM portal attaches disclosure labels to article summaries identifying them as AI-generated. RTM Labuan announced in April 2026 that AI would be integrated into editing and data analysis as part of a smart-broadcasting programme.

A governance process began during the review period. In July 2026 the Department of Broadcasting reported consultations with industry stakeholders to draft guidelines on AI use in broadcasting and the creative industries, framed around ethical and responsible use. Budget 2026 separately committed RM2 billion through MCMC to develop a sovereign AI cloud and associated AI centres, framed around data sovereignty and technology ethics.

As of August 2026, SMM identified no finalised, publicly adopted RTM-wide policy covering human editorial responsibility, verification, synthetic media and disclosure across newsroom and programme uses of AI. RTM’s practice does show a degree of disclosure discipline, particularly the labelling of AI-generated summaries and imagery, which is more than several regional state broadcasters currently demonstrate.

Classification rationale

RTM is classified State-Controlled (SC), meeting all three conditions of the State Media Matrix.

It is predominantly state-funded, at the strongest end of the evidentiary range. RM472.85 million is appropriated directly to RTM’s operating activity for 2026, with 4,305 established positions and approximately RM151 million in RTM-specific development projects. RTM is not a subsidised institution but a budget activity of a federal ministry.

It is state-owned and state-governed. RTM is the federal Department of Broadcasting under the Ministry of Communications, with no independent governing board, charter or arm’s-length statutory structure identified. Its Director-General is a senior federal appointment without protected tenure or independent nomination.

Its editorial agenda is subject to state control, and the evidence is documentary from two directions. RTM is budgeted and performance-measured within a ministry programme for strategic government communication, and its own Broadcasting Code identifies it as a government channel, requires production to reflect prevailing government policy, and frames programming as carrying government messages. Interview evidence from 2024 and 2025 corroborates the practice.

August 2026