Latvia Public Media (Latvijas Sabiedriskais medijs)

Latvijas Sabiedriskais medijs (LSM, Latvian Public Media) is Latvia’s public-service media company, a state limited liability company created by merging Latvijas Televīzija (LTV) and Latvijas Radio (LR). The Saeima mandated the merger on 18 January 2024 by 75 votes to 1, and the company was entered in the Commercial Register on 2 January 2025. It operates two television channels, five radio channels and the LSM.lv news portal, and had 853 employees at the end of 2025. Baiba Zūzena chairs its Management Board, and Anita Brauna has been its editor-in-chief since 1 June 2025.

Media assets

Television: LTV1 and LTV7.

Radio: LR1, LR2, LR3 Klasika, LR5 and Radio NABA. The Russian-language station LR4 was closed from 1 January 2026.

Digital: the LSM.lv news portal, with content in Latvian, English, Russian and Ukrainian, and the REplay.lv streaming platform.

Ownership and governance

All of LSM’s capital shares belong to the state and are held by the Public Electronic Mass Media Council (Sabiedrisko elektronisko plašsaziņas līdzekļu padome, SEPLP), which performs the functions of the shareholders’ meeting under Article 4 of the Public Electronic Mass Media and their Management Law. The law, adopted on 19 November 2020 and in force since January 2021, gives SEPLP three members, nominated respectively by the President, the council implementing the cooperation memorandum between non-governmental organisations and the Cabinet, and the Saeima, and confirmed by the Saeima for four-year terms. The Saeima confirmed the first members on 4 August 2021.

Council appointments have become contested. On 19 June 2025 the Saeima confirmed Sanita Upleja-Jegermane and Una Klapkalne, a former head of Latvijas Radio, but did not confirm Ivars Belte, a former head of LTV, who received 35 votes in favour, 33 against and 13 abstentions. On 6 November 2025 a National Alliance and United List bill to cut SEPLP to two members by removing the civil-society seat failed by 39 votes to 32. A week later the Saeima rejected the civil-society nominee, Jānis Siksnis, who had chaired SEPLP until August 2025, by 38 votes to 34. The Latvian Media Ethics Council said its representatives would not take part in selecting the civil-society member until Saeima approval of that member is abolished. The Saeima confirmed the researcher Andris Saulītis at the third attempt on 18 December 2025, and he was due to take up the post on 2 February 2026. Upleja-Jegermane was re-elected chair on 4 August 2026.

SEPLP unanimously elected LSM’s five-member Management Board on 13 November 2024: Baiba Zūzena (chair), Ieva Aile (programmes and services), Inese Tanne (finance), Ilze Ogle (personnel) and Ingemārs Vekteris (technology). The board took office on 2 January 2025, and its members’ terms end on 1 January 2030. SEPLP elects the editor-in-chief for five years on the board’s nomination. It elected Anita Brauna, previously Latvijas Radio’s chief editor, on 30 April 2025, and the separate LTV and LR chief editor posts were to be abolished when she took office on 1 June 2025. The law prohibits Management Board members from influencing editorial decisions and establishes the editor-in-chief’s independence from management, alongside restrictions on political-party involvement in senior appointments.

After LSM judged Latvijas Radio’s coverage of the storms of 22–23 August 2026 unsatisfactory, the head of its News Service, Uģis Lībietis, resigned on 25 August. SEPLP found no grounds to recall the board and set LSM deadlines of 15 October 2026 for reviews of officials’ conduct and 1 December 2026 for revised internal rules. On 1 September the board issued formal reprimands to Brauna and to Zane Eniņa, chief editor of the Latvijas Radio News Service. SEPLP told the Saeima Human Rights Committee that the shortcomings resulted from editorial decisions rather than the board’s actions.

In June 2026 more than 200 employees protested against the board’s plan to replace the LTV and Latvijas Radio brands with LSM. Under a compromise agreed between the board and staff on 6 July and presented to the Saeima Human Rights Committee on 14 July, both brand names are to be kept. The European Commission’s 2026 rule of law chapter reports that SEPLP is to submit a reform package to the Saeima by the end of 2027 that includes changing LSM’s legal status from a state enterprise to a derived public entity.

Source of funding and budget

LSM is financed predominantly through a state budget grant for its public remit, which was its main source of revenue in 2025. Since the law took effect on 1 January 2021, public media have been barred from carrying commercial communications, with limited exceptions such as sponsorship notices. The state compensated the lost advertising revenue with EUR 5.5 million in 2020 and a further EUR 8.34 million in 2021. The law provides that the grant may not be lower than in the previous year, provided the annual state budget is not smaller than the previous year’s; it sets no share of gross domestic product. The Ministry of Culture acknowledged in September 2025 that the public media budget had not been predictable, becoming known only at the end of the previous year.

Executed state funding for LTV rose from EUR 17.0 million in 2020 to EUR 24.2 million in 2021 and EUR 33.9 million in 2024, and for LR from EUR 9.65 million to EUR 11.76 million and EUR 15.21 million over the same years.

The 2025 budget initially allocated EUR 49.53 million to LSM, with additional financing provided during the year, including transfers for security and reform programmes. The 2026 budget provides EUR 61 million, with the same amount planned for 2027 and 2028. In its first year of operation, LSM recorded net turnover of EUR 52.8 million and a net loss of approximately EUR 299,000. In November 2025 two MPs proposed cutting LSM’s 2026 budget by EUR 3 million and EUR 5.6 million respectively; SEPLP instead accepted a reduction of EUR 405,000 in LSM’s planned budget increase “in the name of national defence and solidarity”.

Editorial independence

LSM’s editorial guidelines, approved on 22 December 2025, state that LSM is editorially independent and does not submit to state power, municipal institutions or political parties, and describe immunity from political influence as a core value. The public media ombud, elected by SEPLP for five years, reviews complaints about LSM’s output. Edmunds Apsalons has held the post since 1 August 2024, succeeding Anda Rožukalne, the first ombud. In 2025 he received 59 complaints and found breaches of the law’s principles or of LSM’s editorial guidelines and code of ethics in 12 of 39 opinions. In April 2026 he found that LSM had breached its editorial guidelines by publishing inaccurate quotations of Prime Minister Evika Siliņa on social media.

The use of Russian has been the main point of political contention. The National Security Concept approved by the Saeima on 28 September 2023 called for public media content to be provided in Latvian or languages belonging to the European cultural space from 1 January 2026, effectively targeting Russian-language services; Nauris Puntulis of the National Alliance acknowledged that the date had been added on his initiative. International media organisations, including the European Broadcasting Union, the European Federation of Journalists and Reporters Without Borders, said that the move would essentially prohibit Latvian Television and Latvian Radio from producing content in Russian. In May 2024 several parties boycotted LTV’s Russian-language European Parliament election debates; LTV described public statements by state institutions and politicians as deliberate attempts to influence it.

In December 2025, ahead of LR4’s closure, LSM gave notice to 36 employees, mainly those producing Russian-language content. On 30 March 2026 the Constitutional Court ruled that provisions requiring public media to produce content in minority languages, and allowing radio and television airtime to be allocated for that purpose, were incompatible with the Constitution. The Court postponed their invalidation until 1 May 2027, leaving Parliament to establish a new framework balancing the protection of Latvian, minority rights, national security and editorial independence. Puntulis became Minister of Culture in Andris Kulbergs’s government, approved on 28 May 2026. On 1 October 2026 the Saeima adopted amendments, not yet promulgated by 12 October and due to take effect on 1 January 2027, that allow content in self-sufficient minority languages only in emergencies, during a state of emergency or to refute false information that threatens democracy. Puntulis compared the day to the dismantling of the Victory Monument, and board member Ieva Aile said that there would be no content in Russian at all from 1 January 2027, except in very isolated cases.

A Norstat survey for SEPLP conducted between December 2025 and January 2026 found that 47 per cent of respondents fully or partly trusted LSM, against 48 per cent a year earlier. No independent systematic assessment establishing sustained government-directed editorial coverage at LSM was located for this review.

AI and digital policy

Before the merger, LTV’s board approved rules on the use of artificial intelligence tools on 13 August 2024. They require published AI-generated elements to be checked and approved by a human, AI-made or altered content to be labelled, and only non-confidential data to be entered into AI tools. No LSM-wide policy on generative artificial intelligence was located at this update, and LSM’s editorial guidelines of December 2025 do not refer to it.

Classification rationale

LSM is classified as Independent State Funded and State Managed (ISFM) because it is wholly state-owned, financed predominantly through state budget allocations, and governed by a council whose members are confirmed by Parliament. Statutory safeguards protect editorial decision-making, including the editor-in-chief’s independence from management. Although political intervention in appointments and restrictions on Russian-language programming raise concerns about institutional autonomy, sustained government control over editorial coverage was not established for this review.

October 2026