National Interest, Grand Narrative With a New Hobby of Sanctioning the Media

Feb 28 , 2026.

Regulators sent a chill through the local newsrooms last week when they yanked the registration of Addis Standard, one of the country’s most popular online outlets, for allegedly “dissiminating reports that violate media ethics, the Ethiopian laws and endanger the national interest of the country.”

Despite the regulators' claim, the media outlet contested that the notice was delivered without prior warning. However, the crackdown did not stop there. The Ethiopian Media Authority (EMA) refused to renew the press cards of three Reuters correspondents after the wire service reported allegations that Ethiopia’s government allowed the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a military force embattled in Sudan, to use a training facility near Assosa town, in the Benishangul-Gumuz Regional State. Days earlier, the media regulators revoked Wazema Radio's registration for “working against national interests.” And their snub of local stringers for DW became an awkward talking point when Johann Wadephul, a senior German Foreign Minister, visited Addis Abeba.

Two phrases, “national interest” and “grand narrative”, now appear in almost every charge sheet.

Ironically, what began in 2018 as a liberalising agenda has morphed into a sanctioning machine powered by the vaguest possible concepts. In 2021, Parliament adopted its third media law in a dozen years, formally recognising online publications that had previously been stranded in legal limbo and creating the Authority as an ostensibly arm’s-length overseer. The scheme was sold as a light-touch one, with registration voluntary, sanctions civil, and journalists spared pre-trial detention. Reality has proved harsher.

A fourth rewrite in 2025, Proclamation No. 1374/2025, recentralised sanctioning powers within the Authority’s leadership, allowed suspensions to be extended indefinitely, paired them with asset freezes, and diluted autonomy guarantees for the Board. Discretion over who may publish now rests with a small circle close to the government. Into this tightened structure, officials have inserted an elastic loyalty test of obedience to an undefined “national interest” and adherence to an officially ratified “grand narrative.”

Interestingly, the law the Authority wields never spells out those terms. It mentions only “public interest”, “public service” and a “national focus” when allocating scarce broadcast frequencies or in reference to public broadcasters.

Announcing the closure of Addis Standard, officials accused the outlet of “endangering the national interests of the country and its people.” Yonathan Tesfaye, the Authority’s deputy director, went further in a Substack post.

Says Yonathan: “The recent actions against Addis Standard, DW, and Reuters are not attacks on truth. They are assertions that Ethiopia will no longer be the recipient of narratives crafted in London, Washington, Paris, Cairo or wherever.”

He chose to frame the information sphere as a “battlefield” in a “society recovering from conflict and facing armed insurgencies.”

That candour gives the game away. Instead of treating the marketplace of ideas as a noisy but necessary forum, the authorities see it as a theatre of information warfare in which only one responsible story may exist. Deviation, even if factual, becomes treasonous. Yet, under the classic harm principle, celebrated by thinkers from John Stuart Mill to Ronald Dworkin, speech may be curbed only to avert a clear and present danger, such as incitement to violence or disclosure of genuine operational military secrets, not to prevent embarrassment or dissent.

Granted, the right of free expression is not an absolute right. It is relative to other individual and collective rights. However, political speech exists so that citizens, not officials, set the agenda. Freedom of expression is the right to offend the powerful and the influential in society. Freedom of the press is about publishing or broadcasting facts and views that these groups in society do not want to see the light of day. A regulator that punishes outlets for diverging from a state-defined narrative usurps the rule of law rather than protecting it. The more enforcement relies on congruence with that narrative, the more officials decide which ideas Ethiopians are allowed to hear.

Suppressing viewpoints in the name of unity also erodes equal status. Freedom of expression should not be deployed as a convenient policy gadget to entrench an officially ratified narrative. It is a recognition that citizens are moral equals capable of making up their own minds.

International human-rights law is crafted to precisely discipline impulse by power to subdue "undesirable" facts and views. It does not ban every restriction on expression, but demands that limits be clearly provided by law, pursue a legitimate objective, and that sanctions be necessary and proportionate. “National security” and “public order” qualify, yet the burden of proof remains with the regulators to ensure that offences, such as incitement to imminent violence, are narrowly drawn and subject to independent judicial review. Vague invocations of “national interest” flunk the legality test because they are hopelessly indeterminate and sweep legitimate criticism together with any truly harmful speech.

Structural quirks of Ethiopia’s regime make matters worse. Online registration remains optional, so many social media channels and YouTube commentators operate outside media law and under general cyber statutes. Registered outlets like the Addis Standard bear the full burden of registration conditions and content oversight, making them easy targets for shape-shifting offences, while unregistered voices often shout more freely, if less responsibly. The mainstream press finds itself squeezed by regulators and outflanked in reach by informal rivals.

Federal officials protest that the Authority is autonomous. Yonathan scolded foreign watchdogs for lacking “the vocabulary” to appreciate "Ethiopia’s institutional boundaries."

However, the clampdown is self-defeating. Global capital, a.k.a. foreign direct investment, reads media-freedom signals for regulatory predictability and the depth of the rule of law. A system in which a regulator can undermine a newsroom for harming an undefined national interest is one in which other federal agencies might twist their mandates against inconvenient businesses or civic groups. Over time, that could corrode trust not only in the press but in contracts, courts and policy promises.

Lenders use press-freedom scores for the reliability of institutions that collect taxes and honour contracts. If a regulator can freeze a newsroom’s assets today, investors fear it could freeze a factory’s account tomorrow or rip up a power licence. For a country desperate for foreign currency, hostility to scrutiny is a self-inflicted wound. Foreign executives eyeing investments read the same risk dashboards and slide down those tables, and capital migrates where courts are viewed as less capricious. Beware! Investors quickly notice.

Nor does narrative control buy real security. A grand tale that brooks no verification cannot ensure cohesion. It can only breed denial. Citizens do not stop forming opinions when the regulated media falls silent. They migrate to diaspora outlets, encrypted channels and anonymous feeds. The state risks ending up with the worst of both worlds of a muted domestic press that nobody trusts and a noisy but sprawling information sphere beyond its reach.

Journalists who live under a constant threat of closure, while those outside the system can only face prosecution under sweeping cybercrime laws, put readers in a position to be drawn toward unverified social-media feeds precisely when the public needs grounded information. The result is a media scene that is less credible, less accountable and more polarised, leaving regulators to govern in the dark.

If they genuinely want a media environment that helps rather than undermines a fragile country, they should reverse course. They should drop the loyalty oath to “national interest” and “grand narrative” and concentrate on demonstrable harms such as incitement to imminent violence and direct threats, as well as narrowly defined disclosures that jeopardise ongoing military operations. They have to let disputes over content restrictions be decided in open court, not in a regulator’s back room.

Above all, they will have to recognise that critical, messy, and discomforting journalism is the best early-warning system and a crucial condition for the economic revival that Ethiopia's leaders habitually say they want. The burden of walking the talk lies with them, and it begins with undoing what they have done with Addis Standard and others.

PUBLISHED ON Feb 28,2026 [ VOL 26 , NO 1348]