A mid-February 2025 report published by the Iranian Parliament’s Research Center shows that the share of the IRIB (the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting) from the government’s public budget in the year 1404 (March 2025-March 2026) is greater than the budget of 10 ministries and amounts to about 35 trillion tomans, that is 350 trillion rials.
This figure in the current year’s budget is considered to be 24 trillion tomans, which is three times more than the organization’s budget in the last year.
The IRIB’s share of the government’s public budget is also equivalent to the total budgets of the entire ministries of Oil, Justice, Foreign Affairs, and Cultural Heritage and matches the budget of the Ministry of Agriculture.
In addition to the IRIB’s large share of the government’s public budget, around 8 trillion tomans is estimated as income for this government media institution. With this amount added, its total budget amounts to about 43 trillion tomans. Apart from that the organization gets a similar amount of cash handouts from the country’s national foreign currency reserve.
Nearly the same amount of budget is also allocated to institutions with similar government propaganda functions, such as the Seminary, the Islamic Propagation Organization, Al-Mustafa International University, the Headquarters for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, the Foundation for the Preservation of Sacred Defense Values, Imam Khomeini Educational Institute, and so on.
The budget allocated to propaganda institutions equals the total budget of the entire Ministry of Energy from the government’s public budget; an institution that in recent years has been unable to fulfill its commitments to build power plants, and the country has faced a significant electricity shortage crisis as a result.
In addition to these amounts, about one trillion tomans of the budget have also been allocated for government-owned news agencies such as IRNA, ISNA, the International Quran News Agency (IQNA), the Nation News Agency (Islamic Consultative Assembly), and the Broadcasting Supervisory Council.
Overall, the media’s share in the government’s public budget for the coming year shows a 43% increase compared to the current year.
Such a massive allocation of government budget to media, 98% of which is for the IRIB, comes at a time when the IRIB has faced a decline in audience over the past years.
According to a survey by ISPA (Iranian Students Polling Agency) in autumn 2024, only 11.5% of people follow TV shows and series, and only 12.5% of people get news from the IRIB.
At the same time, the head of the IRIB’s Research Center claimed in a response to this survey that this media outlet has over 65% audience, but Payman Jebelli, the head of IRIB, stated on February 16, that the actual figure is no more than 41 percent.
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