Sudan

Sudan’s state media landscape is dominated by three institutions that operate within the country’s executive information system under the political authority of the Ministry of Culture and Information: the Sudan News Agency (SUNA), Sudan National Broadcasting Corporation (SNBC) / Sudan TV, and Sudan Radio. All three are classified as State-Controlled (SC) in the 2026 update. The three outlets share a common governance pattern: government ownership, opaque public-budget funding, the absence of an autonomous board or independent appointment framework, and editorial output closely aligned with the SAF-led government’s positions. Sudan ranked 161st of 180 countries in the 2026 World Press Freedom Index by Reporters Without Borders, a drop of five places from 156/180 in 2025, placing it alongside Iraq and Yemen in the most catastrophic press-freedom category, with RSF identifying “recurring armed conflict” as the primary driver of decline.

Since 15 April 2023, Sudan has been engulfed in a devastating civil war between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) under Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, who serves as President of the Transitional Sovereignty Council, and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) paramilitary group under Gen. Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo “Hemedti.” The conflict has produced two competing claims to state authority. The internationally recognised Transitional Sovereignty Council government, led since 31 May 2025 by Prime Minister Kamil Idris and supervised at the media level by Minister of Culture and Information Khaled Ali Al-Aiser (appointed November 2024), returned to Khartoum on 11 January 2026 after a nearly three-year relocation to Port Sudan, following SAF battlefield gains in 2025 including the recapture of the Republican Palace in March 2025 and the restoration of army control over much of the capital. The RSF-aligned Sudan Founding Alliance / TASIS announced a parallel administration on 26 July 2025, naming Mohamed Hassan al-Taishi as Prime Minister in Nyala, Darfur; the African Union rejected recognition of the parallel government on 29 July 2025. The State Media Monitor classification of Sudan’s three state outlets refers exclusively to their operation under the internationally recognised SAF-aligned government; no evidence was found that SUNA, SNBC, or Sudan Radio produces content for the RSF parallel administration.

The civil war has inflicted catastrophic damage on Sudan’s state media infrastructure and on its broader press-freedom environment. The shared Al-Mulazmeen radio-television complex in Omdurman, home to both Sudan TV and Sudan Radio, was attacked by RSF forces at the outset of the war and held for approximately 11 months before SAF recapture on 12 March 2024; the Ministry of Information cited extensive fire damage to the radio buildings, destruction of television studios, and complete loss of new external broadcasting equipment, while the Sudanese Journalists Syndicate expressed concern over the fate of the broadcaster’s nearly century-old archive. eMM Media Monitoring estimated that approximately 90% of media facilities in Khartoum were destroyed during the war’s early phases, affecting both state and private media.

The Sudanese Journalists Syndicate reported that 34 journalists had been killed and 680 violations documented since 15 April 2023, while CPJ reported at least seven journalists missing as of mid-April 2026; Reporters Without Borders separately reported that two SNBC journalists, Issam Hassan Morjan and Sami Abd el-Hafidh, were among at least seven journalists killed between July 2023 and November 2024. On 21 March 2025, an RSF drone strike on a Sudan TV vehicle near the Republican Palace killed three SNBC media workers (Farouk al-Zahir, Magdy Abdel Rahman, and Ibrahim Mudawi) along with their driver Wajeh Jaafar. Beyond the state-media sector, the Ministry of Culture and Information suspended the independent news platform Sudania 24 on 8 April 2026 and gave Sudanese media organisations until 1 June 2026 to regularise their legal status, in a licensing directive that press-freedom organisations including CPJ and Radio Dabanga warned could further shrink the space for independent reporting. Sudan’s humanitarian crisis remains the world’s largest displacement and food emergency, with approximately 33.7 million people — two-thirds of the population — needing humanitarian assistance in 2026 and over 12 million displaced since April 2023.

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