Albanian Telegraphic Agency (ATA)
ATA at a glance
SC · 2026Decree No. 1960 of 9 November 1954; Prime Minister’s Office; ATA; EANA; RSF World Press Freedom Index 2026. Information checked to 13 October 2026.
A state agency still under a 1954 decree
Classification trajectory · 2022–2026State Media Monitor classification record; Assembly of Albania; Prime Minister’s Office; ATA. Information checked to 13 October 2026.
The Albanian Telegraphic Agency (Agjencia Telegrafike Shqiptare, ATA or ATSH) is Albania’s state news agency and is listed on the Prime Minister’s Office website among its subordinate institutions. Its origins lie in the press office established in 1920; it took the name Albanian Telegraphic Agency on 29 December 1944, and it was established by decree on 9 November 1954. ATA distributes news in Albanian, English and French and has 40 approved staff posts. Valbona Zhupa has been Director General since July 2021, and Almarina Gegvataj has been Editor-in-Chief since 2019.
Media assets
News agency: a wire service in Albanian, English and French, and a photo service.
Archive: more than 300,000 historic images and negatives dating from 1913, which ATA is digitising.
Digital: the ata.gov.al portal
Ownership and governance
ATA still operates under Decree No. 1960 of 9 November 1954. Presenting the agency’s 2025 budget to a parliamentary committee in November 2024, Zhupa asked for a new law on the creation, organisation and operation of ATA, and the committee chair, Ina Zhupa, described the decree as outdated. No such law had been adopted by October 2026. When the government began transferring institutions from the Prime Minister’s Office to ministries in 2026, ATA’s status was still under evaluation, according to the Prime Minister’s Office as reported on 5 June 2026.
Armela Krasniqi, who had been communications director for Prime Minister Edi Rama from 2013 to 2017, led ATA from 2017 until the Assembly elected her chair of the Audiovisual Media Authority on 7 July 2021. On the Prime Minister’s proposal, the Council of Ministers then appointed Valbona Zhupa as Director General. Zhupa had headed the press office of the Municipality of Tirana from 2001 to 2011, served as deputy director and director of information at ATA from 2013 to 2016, and was editor-in-chief of thematic programmes at the public broadcaster TVSH from 2016 to 2021. The European Alliance of News Agencies (EANA) listed her as Director General in October 2026.
ATA is a member of EANA and hosted its spring conference in Tirana in May 2025. It renewed a cooperation agreement with Anadolu in January 2022 and signed agreements with the Bulgarian News Agency in May 2022, Italpress in January 2025 and the Malta News Agency in February 2026.
Source of funding and budget
ATA is financed through direct state budget appropriations, under a separate institutional budget comprising a single programme for its news-agency activities. Its allocation was ALL 57.0 million in 2022, ALL 63.6 million in 2023, ALL 87.5 million in the initial 2024 budget and ALL 103.1 million in 2025. The 2026 budget, as amended on 30 June, allocates ALL 103.2 million, with ALL 103.1 million projected for 2027 and ALL 104.7 million for 2028.
A single budget line, rising since 2022
Funding · ALL| State budget allocation | ALL |
|---|---|
| 2022 | 57.0m |
| 2023 | 63.6m |
| 2024, initial budget | 87.5m |
| 2025 | 103.1m |
| 2026, amended 30 June | 103.2m |
State budget laws and normative acts, 2022–2026; Normative Act No. 2 of 30 June 2026. Information checked to 13 October 2026.
Editorial independence
No publicly available editorial statute, code of ethics or independent oversight mechanism safeguarding ATA’s editorial autonomy was identified for this review. The agency continues to cite the 1954 decree as its principal governing instrument. In October 2020 the United States ambassador, Yuri Kim, said that an ATA headline about her remarks was misleading and needed to be corrected. At the parliamentary hearing on ATA’s 2025 budget, the opposition member of parliament Andia Ulliri said that she had not seen opposition protests reflected in ATA’s news, while the committee chair said that the institution had built credibility and impartiality.
Observers interviewed by State Media Monitor in April 2025 noted that while technical production standards had improved, editorial alignment with government priorities persisted, and no significant progress on independence had been achieved.
AI and digital policy
No publicly available ATA policy governing the use of artificial intelligence in journalism, or documented application of AI tools in its news production, was identified for this update.
Classification rationale
ATA is classified as State-Controlled (SC) because it operates under the Prime Minister’s Office, is financed directly from the state budget, and its Director General is appointed by the government on the Prime Minister’s proposal. No independent governing body or effective institutional safeguards for editorial autonomy were identified. Documented concerns about politically selective coverage, supported by State Media Monitor’s 2025 research finding continued editorial alignment with government priorities, reinforce the classification.
October 2026
Citation (cite the article/profile as part of):
Dragomir, M. (2025). State Media Monitor Global Dataset 2025.
Media and Journalism Research Center (MJRC).
Zenodo.
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17219015
This article/profile is part of the State Media Monitor Global Dataset 2025, a continuously updated dataset published by the Media and Journalism Research Center (MJRC).