Indonesia

Indonesia is Southeast Asia’s largest democracy and its most populous state. Prabowo Subianto took office as President in October 2024, and during 2026 all three of the country’s mapped state-media organisations showed increased alignment with government priorities, with the national news agency explicitly framing its output around the administration’s Asta Cita programme.

The State Media Monitor maps three organisations in Indonesia, and all three changed category during the 2022–2026 window. On a review of the State Media Monitor dataset, Indonesia is the only country with two or more mapped outlets where that is the case.

• TVRI, the national television broadcaster, and RRI, the national radio broadcaster, are both classified State-Controlled (SC), reclassified in 2026 from Independent State-Funded and State-Managed/Owned Media (ISFM).
• Antara, the national news agency, is classified Captured Public / State-Managed/Owned (CaPu), having moved from Independent State-Managed (ISM) in 2024.

Indonesia therefore ends the 2026 cycle with none of its three mapped outlets in the independent family, down from two in 2025. In 2023, only Antara was classified in an independent category.

TVRI and RRI were both reclassified to ISFM in 2025 on conduct-based grounds. TVRI had broadened regional coverage, substantially increased political debate programming and played a prominent role in countering disinformation during the 2024 general elections; RRI had pursued digital transformation and regional outreach, with no verified cases of censorship or interference. Interviews with journalists at both organisations corroborated growing operational autonomy.

Both returned to State-Controlled in 2026 after decisive public statements emerged within seven weeks of each other, although the evidence came from opposite directions.

At RRI, President Director I Hendrasmo told a parliamentary committee on 17 June that the broadcaster holds a strategic position as an “instrument of the state”, and that its programmes function as an instrument of development communication supporting the government’s strategic agendas. At TVRI, the evidence came from the ministry: on 3 August, Deputy Communication and Digital Affairs Minister Angga Raka Prabowo described the broadcaster as an “instrument of the state” and said it should translate current state policy into its editorial policy, programmes and content.

Both used the same formulation, “instrument of the state”, but the evidentiary direction is different. One is self-description by a broadcaster’s chief executive; the other is external ministerial direction.

Indonesia’s legal framework is stronger on paper than the outcome suggests. Law No. 32/2002 designates TVRI and RRI as public broadcasting institutions; their governing regulations define such institutions as independent and neutral and, following amendments in 2024, prohibit parties outside the Board of Directors from interfering in operations. Law No. 40/1999 on the Press protects press freedom from interference and coercion, and covers news agencies. Broadcast content is overseen by the independent Indonesian Broadcasting Commission, which handles complaints and can impose sanctions.

Those safeguards did not prevent a deputy minister from telling TVRI’s leadership in August 2026 to translate current state policy into its editorial policy, programmes and content. The problem is therefore not the complete absence of formal safeguards, but their limited institutional force in practice, reinforced by governance appointments that derive from the state and by dependence on annual budget allocation. State Media Monitor identified no outlet-specific audience council, independent editorial ombudsman, enforceable editorial charter or third-party editorial audit mechanism across the three organisations.

TVRI and RRI depend overwhelmingly on annual state allocations. TVRI’s initial 2026 DIPA of IDR 1.159 trillion became an effective regular ceiling of IDR 1.153 trillion after IDR 6.04 billion was temporarily blocked, while RRI’s IDR 997.71 billion ceiling was reduced to IDR 946.93 billion after an adjustment linked to presidential directive priorities. The broadcast licence fee provided for in law has never been introduced.

Antara, by contrast, recorded audited 2025 operating revenue of IDR 500.47 billion: IDR 180.67 billion, or about 36%, from its news and Public Service Obligation segment; IDR 300.70 billion, or about 60%, from commercial operations; and IDR 19.09 billion from its AETP subsidiary. Its Bloomberg partnership alone contributed about IDR 185.6 billion. On the disclosed segment data this supports its Captured Public rather than State-Controlled classification, but one calculation remains open: State Media Monitor counts qualifying state-origin commercial support towards the funding threshold, while Antara’s accounts do not disclose commercial revenue by client type. The report lists 222 cooperation portfolios with ministries and agencies and another 54 with state-owned enterprises.

In March 2025 the Ministry of Communication and Digital Affairs put a proposal to merge TVRI, RRI and Antara into a single multiplatform public institution before Komisi I of the DPR. No merger had been enacted by August 2026. Antara is not included in the current RTRI formulation, which is framed around combining TVRI and RRI; unlike the two broadcasters, it is constituted as a Perum rather than a public broadcasting institution.

Personnel movement is meanwhile running in one direction. Antara’s Director Utama, appointed on 5 January 2026, arrived from the post of Deputy I at the Government Communications Agency. Antara’s chief executive has described an ambition to make the agency a “state information ecosystem” and committed to collaborating with TVRI and RRI on issues central to state interests. Whatever the merger’s legislative fate, these statements point towards a growing convergence in how the three organisations and their political overseers conceive the role of state media.

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