Yemen

Yemen is one of the world’s most severely fractured states, divided since 2014-2015 between the internationally recognised government and the Houthi movement, Ansar Allah. The internationally recognised government is exercised through the Presidential Leadership Council, chaired by Rashad al-Alimi since April 2022 and based in the temporary capital Aden, with Saudi backing. It controls much of the country by territory but a minority of the population. The Houthi authorities govern Sana’a and much of the densely populated north and west through a Supreme Political Council under Mahdi al-Mashat, without international recognition. This partition runs through every state institution, including the media, and there is no single, internationally accepted central authority against which “state media” can be straightforwardly defined.

The 2025/26 cycle brought further disruption. A Southern Transitional Council offensive in December 2025 and a government counter-offensive in January 2026 reordered power in the anti-Houthi camp. The Presidential Leadership Council removed STC leader Aidarous al-Zubaidi from its membership, while the STC’s wider organisational status remained contested after disputed claims of dissolution and continuing internal division. The United Arab Emirates also withdrew its remaining forces from Yemen in January 2026. The internationally recognised government changed prime minister, with Shaya Mohsen Zindani appointed in January 2026 and a new government formed the following month.

The United States redesignated Ansar Allah as a Foreign Terrorist Organization in March 2025, following a January 2025 executive order. The broader regional confrontation, including Houthi attacks toward Israel and renewed Red Sea threats during the 2026 regional conflict, further destabilised the environment.

On press freedom, Reporters Without Borders ranked Yemen 164th of 180 in its 2026 World Press Freedom Index, down ten places from 154th in 2025, with its score falling from 31.45 to 27.89. The country remained in the “very serious” category. RSF recorded lower scores across all five indicators, and describes Yemeni media as polarised by the different protagonists of the conflict, with outlets forced to align with those in power in their area or face sanctions. It also notes that the SABA news agency itself exists in rival versions, with the original site under Houthi control and the government operating another site under the same name.

Journalists in Yemen remain exposed to abduction, detention, torture, intimidation and violence by multiple armed and governing authorities. The country has no independent regulator or statutory safeguard for editorial autonomy on either side of the divide, and the legal, economic and security environment leaves little space for independent journalism.

SMM maps seven Yemeni state-media entries for the 2026 cycle, and every one is classified State-Controlled, the only typology present. The defining characteristic is not the category but its partition: the war has duplicated or fragmented Yemen’s state-media inheritance across two rival administrations.

Two institutions appear as explicit rival operations under the same name: Yemen TV and the Yemen News Agency, SABA. Each exists in a Houthi and Sana’a version and an internationally recognised government version, producing competing accounts of the same events. The Yemen General Corporation for Radio and Television is treated as a fragmented state-radio inheritance rather than a coherent national broadcaster: its Sana’a-based operations and northern stations answer to the Houthi authorities, while government-area stations operate under the internationally recognised government or aligned local authorities.

Two historic state newspapers founded in the wake of the 1962 revolution ended up on opposing sides of the divide. Al-Thawra is controlled by the Houthi authorities in Sana’a and continues to operate in print, PDF and online form. Al-Jumhuriya, based in Ta’izz, belongs to the internationally recognised government’s side of the state-media inheritance, but remains a foundation under rehabilitation rather than a fully restored regular daily.

Across both zones, the mapped outlets are owned, sustained and editorially directed by the authority controlling their territory. None has independent governance, independent funding or safeguards for editorial autonomy. Yemen therefore presents a uniformly state-controlled media landscape within the SMM mapping, fractured into parallel state-media systems that produce competing official narratives in one of the world’s most dangerous environments for journalists.

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