Hungary


government is protecting them against imaginary threats and that the critical media are foreign agents,” says Tamás Bodoky, editor-in-chief of investigative site Átlátszó. Set up by veteran journalist Bodoky in 2011, Átlátszó ‘doesn’t do the news race, only explosive stuff’. It has paid the price for its independence, having to scramble for short-term grants and crowdfunding to survive and being targeted by a government smear campaign naming it as a Soros-grantee – and therefore the enemy. “There’s a huge pseudo-media sector


INDEPENDENCE WITHERING


Lorraine Mallinder examines the media’s health under Prime Minister Viktor Orbán


H


ungary’s Viktor Orbán positions himself as a renegade leader speaking hard truths to the EU liberal elite. But,


when it comes to his own regime, the independent voices speaking truth to the autocratic prime minister are slowly being silenced. Now embarking on his third straight term in office, Orbán has built what some term a mafia state, dismantling the democratic checks and balances of the post-communist era while enriching an inner circle loyal to his Fidesz party. A few of those party members now control the media outlets that would otherwise be holding him to account. Orbán’s control has been cemented with a simple method: advertising spend. “Propaganda media have unlimited


state resources,” says Ágnes Urbán, of Budapest-based watchdog Mérték Media Monitor. Take the €40 million of taxpayers’ money spent last year on campaigns against Hungarian-born philanthropist George Soros (who invoked Orbán’s wrath with his support


12 | theJournalist


for migrant rights), distributed in the form of advertising contracts reserved for friends of Fidesz.


There is no such fortune for independent outlets, which battle it out in a rigged market. “[The government] puts pressure on different sectors and companies not to run advertising in independent media,” says Urbán, a specialist in media economics. Such was the fate of Magyar Nemzet, an 80-year-old daily shut down in the wake of April’s election. “For the last three years, we struggled to get advertising because [companies] knew that they’d get a special inspection from the tax office,” says Csaba Lukács, a foreign correspondent who had been with the newspaper for 18 years. As the independent sector shrinks, public service broadcasting and a roster of once-independent names, such as television channel TV2 and news site Origo, are expanding fast and producing anti-migrant, anti-Brussels and anti-Soros scare stories. “It’s aggressive brainwashing. They convinced Hungarian voters that the


offering well-paid jobs … Journalists in the independent media need job security and time to do their work and keep the government accountable,” says Bodoky. “When the EU criticises Hungary, Orbán says journalists are not in jail, so it’s OK.”


Orbán seems to be getting along fine


without resorting to harsher methods. He knows it would play badly on an international level, says Urbán. “Continuous hidden pressure and step-by-step restrictions can be more useful,” he adds. An irony is that EU money is propping


“ ”


They convinced voters that the government is protecting them and that the critical media are foreign agents


up at least one propagandist. Orbán’s childhood friend, Lőrinc Mészáros, went from being a gas pipe fitter to owning an array of companies, including the country’s biggest media organisation, which runs Echo TV and a stable of influential regional newspapers. Átlátszó calculates that, between 2010 and 2017, nine of the Mészáros family’s 203 companies won public tenders worth €1.5 billion (£1.31 billion), 83 per cent of which came from EU sources. “In various ingenious ways, they’re taking over the country. It’s like: ‘We’re the only game in town. There’s no escape’,” says Dan Nolan, a freelance journalist who writes for The Guardian and Al Jazeera. He recently came under attack from the regime, accused of being a ‘political activist’ after exposing the government’s direct editorial control of state and pro-government media. “I’m not optimistic,” says Dániel


Szalay, a freelance media correspondent for 24.hu, who has spent the past few years tracking the assault on independent media. “I’ve seen many tragedies, professional journalists losing their jobs or [leaving] the country. Now it’s just the fighters who are here.” (The Prime Minister’s international


communications office declined to comment, stating that it doesn’t comment on media affairs.)


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28