Mongolia

Mongolia is a parliamentary democracy that has been in political turbulence. A leadership feud within the ruling Mongolian People’s Party produced a crisis between September and November 2025, during which the speaker of parliament resigned, Parliament voted to dismiss the Prime Minister, President Ukhnaagiin Khürelsükh vetoed that decision and the Constitutional Court subsequently ruled the dismissal unconstitutional, while deputy speaker Khürelbaataryn Bulgantuya was later dismissed by Parliament on 12 November 2025. The country has had three prime ministers in nine months: Luvsannamsrain Oyun-Erdene until June 2025, Gombojavyn Zandanshatar until March 2026, and Nyam-Osoryn Uchral, elected by the State Great Khural on 30 March 2026 and heading a government that took office on 4 April.

The consequences have reached beyond the legislature. Bulgantuya told the Guardian in March 2026 that she faced 12 to 20 years’ imprisonment on a charge of organised effort to unlawfully seize or retain state power, arising from her role in chairing the October 2025 parliamentary vote on the Prime Minister’s dismissal. In the same month Mongolia’s Universal Periodic Review outcome was adopted by the UN Human Rights Council; CIVICUS identified 23 recommendations concerning civic space, of which Mongolia supported 22. Civil society organisations have separately raised concerns about the possible re-criminalisation of defamation, online intimidation of a parliamentarian, and the fining of a news website for using a photograph of a public official.

Mongolia ranked 85th of 180 in the 2026 RSF World Press Freedom Index with a score of 55.79, up from 102nd and 52.57 in 2025. RSF describes Mongolia as a liberal democracy since the early 1990s that broadly respects media freedom and pluralism, while noting that the country still lacks basic legal protection for source confidentiality and that flawed defamation laws facilitate arbitrary lawsuits against journalists, inciting self-censorship. Television remains the dominant medium, accounting for at least 60 per cent of the market.

State Media Monitor maps two organisations, both classified State-Controlled and neither in the independent family. MNB, the Mongolian National Broadcaster, is the country’s only public service media group, operating five television channels and four radio services. Montsame is the national news agency, founded in 1921 and the oldest continuously operating news organisation in the country.

The two share a legal origin and diverged from it. Article 4 of the 1998 Media Freedom Law prohibits state bodies from having media under their control, and Parliament’s Resolution No. 103 of 28 August 1998 named Montsame directly, ordering that it and the Radio and Television Administration cease operating as government regulatory agencies and be reorganised as national public media organisations. The two subsequently followed different institutional paths. MNB received a dedicated public service broadcasting statute in 2005, establishing a fifteen-member National Council whose members are selected from civil society nominees for six-year terms, alongside statutory editorial independence and source protection. Montsame never acquired an equivalent statutory independence framework; it subsequently operated as a government implementing agency and, from 1 January 2022, was placed under the jurisdiction of the Office of the President by Government Resolution No. 400.

Their funding positions differ correspondingly. Montsame’s audited 2024 accounts record state budget financing at approximately 95.2 per cent of total financing sources. MNB’s 2025 report, published in August 2026, records direct state budget support at 40.6 per cent of revenue, with a further 38.5 per cent from a statutory household broadcasting fee of MNT 1,100 per month, unchanged since 1998 and set by the Government on the National Council’s proposal. Whether that levy counts as state-derived is a methodological question for the State Media Matrix rather than a gap in the evidence.

The institutional safeguards differ sharply. Montsame lacks an independent media-governance mechanism or appointment process insulated from the presidential administration. MNB has statutory governance and editorial independence safeguards, but its National Council is selected through processes involving the President, Parliament and Government and formally appointed by Parliament, leaving the appointment structure politically exposed. Those safeguards have not prevented observable influence: OSCE/ODIHR monitoring of the 2024 parliamentary elections found that MNB showed a visible preference towards the ruling party, and in June 2025 the Mongolian Journalists’ Union reported that 84 per cent of Montsame’s employees had signed a demand alleging management interference with editorial independence.

State Media Monitor identified no generally applicable statutory requirement for news organisations to label AI-generated content, though a narrower election regulation requires AI-generated online election advertising and election-related image, audio and video material to be visibly labelled. A replacement Media Freedom Law remained under discussion in 2026, with media independence, regulation and the future framework for public media among the issues under consideration.

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