While avoiding the physical violence or the jailing of journalists common in autocratic regimes elsewhere, the Hungarian government has pursued a clear strategy to silence the critical press through deliberate manipulation of the media market – engineering the forcible closure or effective government takeover of once-independent media – and through the delegitimization of journalists. https://www.eudebates.tv/debates/special-debates/future-of-europe/hungary-and-poland-veto-blocked-eu-budget-for-rule-of-law-link/ The construction of a pro-government media empire serves as a vast propaganda machine for the government of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, insulating large parts of the public from access to critical news and information so as to maintain the Fidesz party’s hold on power.
Since 2010, the Hungarian government has systematically dismantled media independence, freedom and pluralism, distorted the media market and divided the journalistic community in the country, achieving a degree of media control unprecedented in an EU member state.
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The division between pro-government media and independent media has replaced ideological dividing lines; the remaining left- and right-wing independent media in Hungary are regularly smeared as political activists, “Hungary-haters”, foreign agents or traitors. They are being starved into submission through the state’s abuse of public resources and harassment of private advertisers, even as the government shovels vast sums of taxpayer money into its own media mouthpieces.
Hungarian journalists interviewed by the mission described a coordinated system of censorship and content control not seen since the fall of the Communist regime. They point out that Russian disinformation – a strong concern elsewhere in the region – is absent or weak in Hungary given that the public broadcaster, now deformed into a state broadcaster, effectively plays this role, together with the pro-government KESMA media group. Independent journalists are subject to pervasive discrimination by the state, denied access to publicly held information, excluded from official events and prevented or actively hindered from communicating with public officials.
A small number of critical, independent media continue to exist in Hungary, though they are under constant threat and in many cases suffer from a lack of financial resources. Their work is blunted by a dominant pro-government narrative, and their reach is mostly limited to the capital, leaving the majority of the country’s population in the dark. Readers and viewers who do not actively look for alternative sources of news (mainly online) receive a virtually exclusively government narrative given the government’s level of control over the print, radio and television markets.
