SANA
Syrian state (government of the post-Assad transitional authorities)
Background
SANA was founded on 24 June 1965 and is headquartered in Damascus. For nearly six decades it served as the wire service of the Ba'athist state under the Assad family, and it was widely regarded as a government mouthpiece. It issued official statements and presented government accounts of the civil war that began in 2011. It launched a website in 1997 and later published in Arabic, English, French, Kurdish, Spanish and Turkish, with hundreds of stories a day. After the Assad government fell in December 2024, the agency stayed under the Ministry of Information, now led by the transitional government. A new director was appointed in April 2025, and the agency was relaunched on 20 August 2025 under the slogan 'SANA… A Turning Point', with restructuring and new digital and visual units. The relaunch has been described as part of a gradual effort to reform state media. It remains state-owned and state-funded, so its editorial independence is limited. Readers should treat it as an authoritative source for the Syrian government's official statements. They should not treat it as an independent check on those statements. Because its coverage reflects government policy, its handling of the Trump administration depends mostly on what the Syrian government is doing with Washington at the time. The caveat that applies to any state wire service holds here: it reports what the authorities want reported.
Sources
- Syrian Arab News Agency (Wikipedia)
- Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) – State Media Monitor
- Relaunch of the Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA)
- Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) – Syria Report directory
Profile compiled 2026-10-11; refreshed when ownership, funding, or the administration changes.