Hungary: Media under pressure
Is the government in Budapest taxing and regulating the freedom right out of the Hungarian media?
Of all the new democracies to join the European Union in the aftermath of the Soviet Union’s collapse, the one with the most compelling media story may well be Hungary.
Viktor Orban lost an election in 2002 and I think the lesson he learned from that lost election was that his biggest enemy, besides the opposition, is the independent media.
Since his return to power in 2010, Prime Minister Viktor Orban and his Fidesz party have been making systemic changes to the way the media are regulated and the way they are taxed.
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The government even tried to put a tax on the internet, per gigabyte, but that idea did not fly.
Orban has got a two-thirds majority in parliament and his critics in the media accuse him of using his powers to bring them to heel.
Critical voices have tried to flee the mainstream media for the relative safety of practicing their journalism online. But even on the web the situation is problematic as reporters learned in the case of Origo, one of Hungary’s most popular digital news outlets.
The Orban government says that freedom of press is not under threat; that it is the poor quality of Hungarian journalism that causes “social harm”.
So what are the challenges facing Hungary’s journalists? And can critical investigative journalism survive in Hungary?
The Listening Post‘s Will Yong reports on Hungary’s media battle.
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Published On 7 Dec 2014