Sri Lanka Rupavahini Corporation (SLRC)

The Sri Lanka Rupavahini Corporation (SLRC) is Sri Lanka’s statutory national television broadcaster. It was established under the Sri Lanka Rupavahini Corporation Act No. 6 of 1982 and commissioned on 15 February 1982, with civil servant M. J. Perera as its founding chairman. It broadcasts in Sinhala, Tamil and English and describes its terrestrial services as providing island-wide reception.

Media assets

Television: Rupavahini, its principal Sinhala-language service; Channel Eye, an English-language service carrying sports, education, youth and current-affairs programming; and Nethra TV, serving Tamil-speaking audiences

Ownership and governance

SLRC is a state-owned public corporation established under the 1982 Act. It is listed among the institutions administered by the Ministry of Mass Media; during the review period, mass media formed part of a combined ministerial portfolio with health. The corporation was temporarily transferred to the Ministry of Defence by presidential gazette in September 2019, but current official institutional listings again place it within the mass-media portfolio.

The governing corporation consists of seven members:

• four members appointed by the responsible minister on the basis of experience in broadcasting, engineering, law, finance, administration, labour relations or communications;
• one representative of the Sri Lanka Broadcasting Corporation;
• one representative of the National Film Corporation; and
• one representative of the ministry responsible for education.

The responsible minister appoints one of the seven members as chairman.

Members nominally serve four-year terms and may be reappointed. Those terms do not provide meaningful protection from executive intervention: the minister may remove any member by gazette order without assigning a reason, and the Act expressly prevents such removal from being challenged in court. Temporary replacements and appointments to vacancies are also controlled by the minister.

The Director General is appointed by the corporation only with the minister’s written approval. The Director General may also be removed with the minister’s prior approval. More broadly, the Act authorises the minister to issue general or special written directions concerning the corporation’s exercise of its powers and performance of its duties, and SLRC is required to comply.

Leadership turnover has been unusually rapid. Sonala Gunawardana was appointed chairman in January 2022. During 2024 alone, Prasad Samarasinghe was succeeded by Sudantha Liyanage on 3 June, Liyanage by Senesh Dissanayake Bandara on 25 September, and Bandara by Gihan De Silva on 26 December. De Silva remained listed as chairman in August 2026. SLRC’s current management page identifies Manoja Nadeeshana Amarasingha as acting Director General.

The frequency of these appointments reinforces the structural weakness of the nominal four-year term. Four different people served as chairman during 2024, with every appointment made by the government and no arm’s-length nomination or confirmation procedure.

Institutional restructuring was proposed repeatedly and not carried through. Cabinet approved in principle on 27 November 2023 the creation of a single public company through the merger of SLRC and the Sri Lanka Broadcasting Corporation. A Cabinet-appointed committee went further on 23 March 2025, recommending that the three state broadcasters — SLBC, SLRC and the Independent Television Network — be amalgamated as part of a wider state-enterprise restructuring for efficiency and profitability. On 9 June 2025, Cabinet concluded that the expected benefits would not be realised because of differences in broadcasting technology, studio-space requirements and transmission infrastructure. It decided that the two organisations should remain separate state enterprises and pursue individual strategic business plans.

Source of funding and budget

SLRC operates a mixed commercial and public-funding model, but its ordinary income has predominantly come from advertising, airtime sales, programme production, sponsorship and other operating activities rather than direct government subsidy.

Its audited 2020 income statement recorded LKR 1.049 billion in sales, LKR 379.1 million in other operating income, LKR 310 million in government subsidy, and a loss after tax of LKR 234.3 million. The direct subsidy was therefore below the State Media Matrix’s more-than-50% threshold, whether measured against total operating income or against sales plus subsidy.

More recent financial statements strengthen rather than weaken that conclusion. For 2024, SLRC reported sales of LKR 1.218 billion and other operating income of LKR 324.4 million. The statements record no operating government subsidy in either 2023 or 2024. They report a loss after tax of LKR 266.3 million in 2024, compared with LKR 343.2 million in 2023.

The accounts separately recognise government grants associated with capital assets. Such capital financing does not establish that the state supplied most of the corporation’s annual operating income. SLRC nevertheless remains financially fragile, with recurring losses and substantial accumulated deficits.

In May 2026, Cabinet approved LKR 600 million from the Clean Sri Lanka programme for SLRC to implement the Healthy Food – Happy Life media project over 2026, 2027 and 2028. This is earmarked project funding spread across three years, rather than evidence that the government has become the source of more than half of SLRC’s general annual income. It should nevertheless be monitored in future funding assessments.

On the State Media Matrix funding test, the available evidence does not support coding SLRC as predominantly state-funded. The latest published statements record no operating subsidy, while sales and other operating income remain its principal recurring revenue sources. This is the condition that distinguishes SLRC from a State-Controlled broadcaster.

Editorial independence

The 1982 Act assigns SLRC a public-interest role and requires, as far as practicable, that its news be presented with due accuracy, impartiality and regard for the public interest. It also requires balance in programme subject matter and the maintenance of high programming standards.

Those obligations are not accompanied by institutional independence. The same Act gives the minister control over appointments and removals, requires ministerial approval for the appointment and removal of the Director General, and authorises binding ministerial directions to the corporation. The statutory promise of impartiality therefore operates within a governance framework controlled by the executive.

Assessments obtained by State Media Monitor from Sri Lankan media analysts in September 2023 and June 2024 described the government as exercising substantial influence over SLRC’s strategic and editorial decisions. RSF likewise states that personnel working at SLRC and the other state-owned media institutions administered by the Ministry of Mass Media have very little editorial independence.

No independent statutory body was identified with authority to audit SLRC’s political balance or editorial autonomy. Nor was a binding editorial charter, independent ombudsman or external complaints mechanism specific to the corporation identified. Financial auditing under the Constitution does not provide independent scrutiny of editorial conduct.

AI and digital policy

SLRC has already incorporated generative artificial intelligence into programming. In April 2024 it used an AI-generated presenter, introduced on air as unnamed and never before seen, to announce the auspicious times for the Sinhala and Tamil New Year. The following month its main 8pm news broadcast carried a Sinhala-language segment presented by AI replicas of two of its best-known anchors, Chaminda Gunarathne and Nishadi Bandaranayake, reported as the first news segment in the country delivered in Sinhala using the technology. The segment was produced by Gamini Bandara Menikdiwela, who had trained in the technology in Dubai, under the then chairman, Prasad Samarasinghe.

No publicly accessible SLRC editorial policy was identified governing the approval, labelling or disclosure of AI-generated presenters and synthetic media, the verification of AI-assisted material, protection against impersonation, or human responsibility for automated output. Nor was a binding national framework identified that establishes state-media-specific editorial standards for such use. The use of synthetic replicas of identifiable serving journalists, on the flagship news bulletin of a state broadcaster without an established disclosure regime, is a governance gap of a kind not yet recorded elsewhere in this project’s South Asian coverage.

Classification rationale

SLRC remains classified Captured Public / State-Managed (CaPu), meeting two of the three State Media Matrix conditions.

It is state-owned and state-governed. It is a statutory public corporation under a government ministry. All seven governing members are appointed directly or indirectly by ministers, the responsible minister selects the chairman, and members may be removed without reasons or judicial challenge. Appointment and removal of the Director General require ministerial approval, and the corporation must comply with ministerial directions.

Its editorial agenda is subject to state control. Although the Act contains accuracy and impartiality obligations, these are not protected by an independent appointment system or editorial firewall. Government control over leadership and binding ministerial-direction powers create direct avenues for intervention. RSF and SMM expert assessments find very limited editorial independence.

The funding condition is not met. In 2020, direct subsidy remained well below half of recognised operating income. The 2024 statements report no operating government subsidy in either 2023 or 2024, while commercial sales and other operating income remained the principal recurring sources of revenue. Earmarked capital and project grants do not bring verified state support above the Matrix threshold.

August 2026