Middle East News Agency

What is the Middle East News Agency?

The Middle East News Agency (وكالة أنباء الشرق الأوسط), abbreviated on its own pages as أ.ش.أ, is Egypt's news agency, publishing at mena.org.eg.^[1]

Its own About page states that the agency "تبث أخبارها بثلاث لغات: العربية، الإنجليزية، والفرنسية" — that it distributes its news in three languages, Arabic, English and French — and that its service reaches subscribers inside Egypt and beyond.^[1]

No statement of the agency's legal form, share ownership or supervising authority could be retrieved from the agency's own site. Media Ownership Monitor Egypt records the wider Egyptian state media structure as resting on the National Media Authority, created under Law No. 178 of 2018 as successor to the Egyptian Radio and Television Union, and on the National Press Authority; that profile was last updated on 25 January 2019 and does not itself profile the agency.^[2]

What does the Middle East News Agency cover?

The agency's own About page describes a general news service in three languages and does not itemise a sports desk or a separate sports wire.^[1] No sports-service description published by the agency could be retrieved for this page.

Agency copy on Egyptian sport reaches readers chiefly through subscribing newspapers and broadcasters rather than under the agency's own masthead, which is the normal pattern for a wire service and is the reason an agency's sports output is hard to measure separately.

The agency's three-language distribution is the feature most relevant to sport: English and French filings are the form in which Egyptian results and federation statements travel to international subscribers, and the agency states that it distributes in all three.^[1]

Where a dated Egyptian sports fact is needed, the citable records are those of the governing bodies and of the daily press: CAF's own record of Al Ahly's twelfth continental title in May 2024^[3], and Ahram Online's factbox of 21 May 2026 on the 2025–26 league title.^[4]

How large is the Middle East News Agency's audience?

No audited subscriber, client or reach figure for the agency could be retrieved. Its own About page states that the service reaches subscribers domestically and internationally but gives no number.^[1]

Wire services are in any case measured by client count rather than by audience, and no client list or count published by the agency could be retrieved. Traffic estimators are not audited measurement and no estimator figure is given here.

The category-level figures available for Egypt are survey estimates of news consumption rather than measurements of any one outlet: Media Ownership Monitor Egypt cites survey data putting newspaper readership at 16 per cent in 2017 and television at 77 per cent as a source of news.^[5]

Those survey figures describe the Egyptian news audience as a whole. They are not a measure of this agency, of any one newspaper, or of any one channel, and they are not used here as though they were. No Egyptian measurement currency producing audited, outlet-level figures could be retrieved.^[5]

Since when has the Middle East News Agency existed?

The agency's own About page states "تأسست في 15 ديسمبر 1955" — that it was established on 15 December 1955.^[1] That is the agency's claim about itself; no independent confirmation of the date was retrieved for this page.

The date of establishment is not the date of any later change in the agency's legal status or supervising authority, and no such date could be retrieved.

Why does the Middle East News Agency matter in Egypt's sport?

A national agency supplies the dated baseline copy that domestic papers, broadcasters and websites build on, in three languages, which is what its own About page describes.^[1]

The agency's value is as the common upstream source behind much Egyptian sports reporting rather than as a destination. Because neither an ownership statement nor an audited reach figure could be retrieved, both are recorded here as unestablished rather than estimated.^[1][2]

The agency's stated founding on 15 December 1955 also makes it older than the statute that now governs Egyptian sport, Sports Law No. 71 of 2017. A wire that predates the framework it reports on has carried several successive governance regimes, which is worth knowing when reading its archive.^[1]

The agency is listed here as the national wire rather than as a destination for readers, and its entry rests on statements it makes about itself, recorded as such: the three languages, the subscriber base inside and outside Egypt, and the 15 December 1955 date.^[1] See sport in Egypt.