Bahrain

The Kingdom of Bahrain is an island country in West Asia, located in the Persian Gulf between the Qatari peninsula and the eastern coast of Saudi Arabia, to which it is connected by the King Fahd Causeway. The country is a member of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), the Arab League and the World Trade Organisation, with a population of around 1.6 to 1.7 million and a land area of roughly 780 to 790 square kilometres across Bahrain Island and a number of smaller islands. IMF April 2026 data place Bahrain’s nominal GDP at roughly US$49 billion and nominal GDP per capita at around US$29,500 to 30,000, with purchasing-power-parity GDP per capita at around US$70,000. The country is classified by the World Bank as a high-income economy. The official language is Arabic, English is widely used in commerce and government, and the currency is the Bahraini dinar (BHD).

Bahrain became an independent state from the United Kingdom on 14 August 1971. After the dissolution of the elected National Assembly in 1975, Bahrain was governed without an elected legislature until the 2002 constitutional reforms. The current Constitution of Bahrain was issued on 14 February 2002 following the 14 to 15 February 2001 National Action Charter referendum, transforming the country into a constitutional monarchy and establishing a bicameral National Assembly (Majlis al-Watani) consisting of the elected 40-member Council of Representatives (Majlis al-Nuwwab) and the appointed 40-member Shura Council (Majlis al-Shura), whose members are appointed directly by the King for four-year terms. The most recent parliamentary elections took place in November 2022, in a political environment criticised by rights groups for the exclusion of major opposition forces.

The Head of State is King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa, who acceded to the throne as Emir on 6 March 1999 and became King on 14 February 2002 with the adoption of the constitution. The Head of Government is Crown Prince and Prime Minister Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa, the King’s eldest son, who has served as Crown Prince since 9 March 1999 and was appointed Prime Minister on 11 November 2020 following the death of his predecessor and great-uncle Khalifa bin Salman Al Khalifa, who had held the office since 1970. The First Deputy Prime Minister is Khalid bin Abdallah Al Khalifa. The Council of Ministers, chaired by the Crown Prince and Prime Minister, exercises executive authority across the kingdom’s portfolios under the constitutional supervision of the King.

The State Media Monitor 2026 dataset includes two Bahraini public-media organisations: the Bahrain Radio and Television Corporation (BRTC) and the Bahrain News Agency (BNA), both classified State-Controlled (SC). Both outlets operate under the executive authority of the Ministry of Information, whose current Minister, Dr Ramzan bin Abdulla Al Noaimi, was appointed on 13 June 2022 and exercises ministerial authority over both outlets’ mandates, organisational structures and senior appointments.

The 2025/26 cycle has been defined for Bahraini state media less by institutional reform than by the consolidation and extension of the existing state-controlled media architecture. The defining legal-environment development of the cycle was Press and Electronic Media Law No. 41 of 2025, issued by King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa on 30 October 2025, which Human Rights Watch and MENA Rights criticised as a serious regression for expression and press freedoms in Bahrain and as further extending state control over media output and online expression. Senior management at one of the country’s two SMM-tracked outlets changed during the cycle when Omar Khalifa Shaheen, the Chief Executive Officer of Radio Bahrain Company, announced his departure in August 2025 after four years in the role; the SMM review did not identify a publicly confirmed successor by the close of the review period. At BNA, the directorship of Abdulla Khalil Buhejji, in post since 2019 with the rank of Assistant Undersecretary, continued unchanged through the cycle.

Press-freedom conditions in Bahrain deteriorated materially during the cycle. In its 2026 World Press Freedom Index, Reporters Without Borders ranked Bahrain 170th of 180 countries with a score of 24.84, a fall of thirteen places from 157th and a score of 30.24 in the 2025 Index. RSF’s country profile characterises Bahrain as “ruled with an iron fist by the royal family” and notes that seven journalists were detained in the country. The country has had no independent media outlet operating domestically since the 2017 closure of Al Wasat, and the remaining six national daily newspapers are described by RSF as semi-governmental and owned by royal-family members, which the publications cannot criticise. Bahrain has no independent press or broadcast regulator comparable to arm’s-length regulatory authorities in peer systems; media supervision remains embedded in the executive-controlled Ministry of Information framework.

The “Manama Capital of Arab Media 2024” designation continued to be used to showcase Bahrain’s state-aligned media sector during the review period. National AI governance moved forward with the launch of Bahrain’s National Policy for the Use of Artificial Intelligence in July 2025 and the adoption of the Gulf Cooperation Council’s AI Ethics Manual through the Information and eGovernment Authority, with the framework emphasising legal compliance, AI adoption, public education and local and international cooperation rather than the regulation of generative-AI use in news production or broadcasting. No public-sector generative AI framework specific to Bahraini broadcasting or news-agency operations was identified during this review, and AI policy at BRTC, BNA and other government-aligned media outlets in Bahrain remains an internal administrative matter handled without published guidance.

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