Ecuador
Ecuador’s mapped state media are uniform in type but split across two branches of the state. State Media Monitor maps two outlets, both classified State-Controlled (SC): Comunica EP (Empresa Pública de Comunicación del Ecuador), the executive-branch public media company that runs Ecuador TV, Pública FM, and the digital newspaper El Telégrafo; and the Sistema de Información Legislativa, the National Assembly’s media system, which operates Televisión Legislativa (TVL) and La Radio de la Asamblea Nacional. Both are owned by the Ecuadorian state, funded predominantly or entirely from public money, and directed by authorities appointed within the executive or legislative hierarchy, with no binding safeguard for editorial independence.
What makes Ecuador distinctive is not the mix of typologies, since there is none, but the volatility around its public media and the severity of the wider press-freedom crisis. The executive-branch company has been through repeated restructuring, rebranding, and liquidation processes across successive governments, and its leadership has turned over in step with the political cycle. The country’s overall environment for journalists, meanwhile, has deteriorated faster than almost anywhere in the region, driven primarily by organised-crime violence rather than classic state censorship.
Comunica EP is the successor to Ecuador’s Correa-era public-media system. The current company was created by decree in 2020 after President Lenín Moreno ordered the previous entity, Medios Públicos EP, into liquidation. It runs Ecuador TV, Pública FM, and El Telégrafo, and is classified State-Controlled because its board is chaired and controlled by the Presidency, its general manager is appointed by the government, it depends predominantly on public funding, and it has no binding editorial firewall.
Its output has aligned with successive administrations, and its leadership has changed with the political calendar. Under President Daniel Noboa’s full term, the government named the journalist and former Correísta assemblywoman Marcela Holguín as manager in May 2025. She resigned on 18 November 2025, days after the government lost all four questions in the referendum and popular consultation, amid a wider reshuffle of the Noboa administration. Grace Vanessa Cordero Loor later appeared in 2026 company documents as acting general manager. A parallel liquidation of the old Medios Públicos EP, extended again in 2025, has hung over the group for years, underscoring how contested the survival and future shape of Ecuador’s public media has been.
The Sistema de Información Legislativa is the media system of the National Assembly, operating Televisión Legislativa, founded in 2013, and La Radio de la Asamblea Nacional, founded in 2011, together with the Assembly’s web portal. It is classified State-Controlled because its outlets are owned by a branch of the state, funded from the state budget, and directed within the Assembly’s institutional hierarchy, without any binding guarantee of editorial independence. Their editorial orientation is structurally exposed to the political majority that controls the Assembly.
In the 2025 to 2027 period, Assembly leadership has been in officialist/ADN hands, supported by an ADN-led majority coalition. Niels Olsen of Acción Democrática Nacional (ADN), President Daniel Noboa’s movement, was elected Assembly president in May 2025. After Olsen resigned in June 2026, the presidency passed to ADN’s Mishel Mancheno, keeping the legislative leadership in officialist hands. The outlets were relaunched in September 2025 with a new image, expanded programming, and wider distribution, but their ownership, funding, and governance remain wholly within the Assembly.
Ecuador’s press-freedom environment has deteriorated sharply. Reporters Without Borders ranked the country 125th of 180 in its 2026 World Press Freedom Index, with a score of 44.37, down from 94th in 2025, one of the sharpest falls in the Americas. RSF links the decline to rising danger for journalists amid organised-crime violence, including threats, attacks and murders, with Darwin Baque and Patricio Aguilar among the journalists killed in 2025. A significant legal change came in November 2022, when reforms to the Organic Communications Law rolled back several restrictive mechanisms associated with the 2013 “gag law”, including the concept of “media lynching” and the media supervisor. But that improvement to the formal framework has been overwhelmed by the security crisis.
President Noboa, re-elected in April 2025 and inaugurated for a full term in May 2025, has governed in a context of repeated emergency measures and a militarised response to organised crime. This security environment shapes the conditions in which all Ecuadorian media, public and private, now operate.