Abstract
One year after its fourth consecutive election victory, the Hungarian government is maintaining a tight grip
More than one year has now passed since the Fidesz party of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán swept to another landslide victory in Hungary, securing a fourth consecutive term in office. The April 2022 general election yielded another parliamentary supermajority for the right-wing conservative party, which has proven a resolute ally of the Kremlin within the European Union. The 12 months since then have been marked by a period of relative quiet in terms of major new threats to media freedom in Hungary. There have been no more takeovers of major independent media houses, no silencing of critical media through discriminatory regulatory decisions. However, far from a sign of improvement in the right-wing conservative government’s press freedom record, this period of relative stasis is reflective, observers say, of something far more sinister: the overwhelming success of Orbán’s decade-long campaign to muzzle critical voices and establish a government-friendly media empire.
Since Fidesz won power in 2010, media freedom and pluralism have plummeted. The country is one of the worst-ranked countries in the European Union for the freedom of the press. However, there are no widespread arrests of journalists, common in Turkey. Fewer of the overt acts of censorship observed in Russia. And none of the killings of reporters that are common in autocratic countries around the world. In Hungary, a country bound to some extent by the democratic architecture of the European Union, efforts to silence independent journalism have been more complex and, calibrated to avoid direct rebuke from Brussels. Over the past decade, the government has abused legislative, regulatory and economic powers to distort the media market and dismantle media pluralism, achieving a degree of media control unprecedented in an EU member state.
After Fidesz secured its third term in office in 2018, the following years saw multiple major developments in the media market by Fidesz and its allies. In 2018, its expanding media empire was solidified under the Central European Press and Media Foundation (KESMA) conglomerate, a network run by Fidesz allies which included more than 500 titles. Using business allies as proxies, the ruling party also continued to engineer the takeover of independent media houses. In 2020, pro-government business interests made their move against one of the remaining independent media outlets, Index, leading to its implosion and a mass resignation of journalists. In late 2020, the government-controlled media regulator then removed the country’s last remaining major radio broadcaster critical of the government, Klubrádió, from the airwaves following a discriminatory licensing decision. In comparison, the year following the 2022 election has been quiet. The reasons for this, according to recent interviews conducted by the International Press Institute (IPI) with Hungarian journalists and media experts, are twofold.
The first stems from the high level of control and co-option of the media market that Fidesz already enjoys. Over the past decade, the ruling party has gained unprecedented influence over both private and public media. The public broadcaster has long been deformed into an audio-visual propaganda tool of the government. The bulk of major print, radio and television media was acquired by business figures connected directly or indirectly to the ruling party, in some cases with the help of loans from state-controlled banks. Estimates vary, but studies identify Fidesz as being in direct or indirect control of between 70-80 per cent of the media market. This represents the most advanced model of media capture created in the European Union.
Meanwhile, the other elements of Fidesz’s media machine continued to hum in 2022. The politically-motivated allocation of government advertising budgets – the lubricant of Fidesz’s model for co-opting the press – continues unabated. High levels of control over public broadcaster Magyar Televízió remains entrenched, resulting in clear bias in its news reporting and programming. Political control over the state news agency is extremely high, with the prime minister’s press office shown to explicitly dictate coverage. This has resulted in pro-Russian news coverage during the war in Ukraine, and the media ecosystem is flooded with Russian disinformation about Ukraine. At the same time, Fidesz’s influence over the Media Council, the country’s powerful media regulator, has been locked in for years to come following the appointment of its new chair on a nine-year mandate. All figures serving on the regulator have been selected by the government. The majority of local and regional media remain under the grip of business allies.
Even so, the situation for Fidesz’s media empire has not been without setbacks. Many of the changes in privately-owned media in the last year have occurred within the KESMA network of pro-government titles, which have long received significant financial support from the government in the form of the state advertising. As inflation soared and the economic climate worsened, print editions of Figyelö weekly and Világgazdaság daily were discontinued, as well as City7 newspaper. Outside of KESMA, the pro-government daily newspaper Magyar Hírlap and Pesti TV television channel also closed down. They were joined by 168óra, a political weekly, and Pesti Hírlap, a free newspaper distributed in Budapest. Observers speculate that with mounting costs, and as Fidesz’s priorities shift further towards the power of Facebook campaigns and social media influencers to get the party’s message out, less influential titles have been deemed expendable. Despite these obstacles, support for the dominant pro-government media remains as strong as ever.
Fear of losing EU funds has slowed media takeovers
A second and connected reason for the lack of overt government interference in the media market, observers note, is the diminished pool of independent media houses left for the government to target. Since returning to power in 2010, Fidesz has relied on business allies and oligarchs to step in and buy up independent media houses. They then fired journalists, flipped their editorial lines and aligned them with Fidesz’s messaging. One by one, large titles such as Origo and Népszabadság (later closed) were snapped up by Fidesz allies from retreating foreign owners. Of the three remaining major, independent media understood to be targets, none of their owners show signs of relinquishing control any time soon.
The first is television channel RTL Klub, owned by Luxembourg-based RTL Group. The broadcaster has been insulated from financial pressure through its foreign ownership and remains a market challenger for TV2, owned by József Vida, a close ally of Orbán. RTL Klub’s sale, eyed by figures in the pro-Fidesz business network, would spell disaster for citizens’ access to pluralistic news reporting on television. Despite rumours, there have been no indications that RTL Group is considering an imminent sale.
The second bastion of independent media is Central Media Group, owned by businessman Zoltan Varga. He has spoken out about being approached about a sale of his media assets. Any sale to government-linked business interests would lead to trouble for the country’s largest remaining independent news website 24.hu, which is part of the media group. In November 2022, Varga was questioned by the National Tax and Customs Administration (NAV) as part of an investigation into alleged budget fraud, leading to suspicions that it was partly aimed at increasing pressure, and his mobile phone was targeted with Pegasus spyware in 2021. Smears and attacks in pro-government media have been continuous. For now, however, the sale of Central Media Group appears remote.
The third remaining likely target is the country’s most-read tabloid, Blikk, which is owned by Switzerland-based media group Ringier AG. While the newspaper’s coverage is mostly dominated by crime and celebrity news, it does report on major corruption and political scandals, drawing the ire of Fidesz. As a foreign-owned media company, the newspaper also naturally falls into Fidesz’s crosshairs. Given the opportunity, government-aligned capital would be likely to make a move to acquire the tabloid.
With neither Ringier AG nor the other media two media owners signalling a retreat from the Hungarian market, such takeovers do not appear possible without major intervention. And with Budapest currently locked in a rule of law standoff with the European Commission over the release of billions of euros in EU funds, the moment might not be right for heavy-handed action. Instead, the government appears likely to bide its time.
While Fidesz might have temporarily taken its foot off the gas in its media capture campaign, the wider situation for independent media remains challenging. Aside from RTL Klub, the remaining independent media titles are pinned back into a few areas of the market: online daily news, political weeklies and investigative journalism. While many digital platforms have pioneered new subscription-based funding models, economic isolation from the government’s advertising budgets undermines their ability to expand. The current economic crisis and soaring inflation has also taken a toll on audiences’ paying power, with readership and subscriptions dropping in the last year. Journalists from these titles continue to be blocked from interviews with government politicians and are barred from attending some press events. Many of the hard-hitting investigative reports are ignored by the public media and the pro-government press. A recent legal ruling was a victory for HGV, a respected political weekly, in its battle to access public information, but overall the freedom of information climate remains problematic.
To pile further pressure on remaining independent media, recent months have seen a smear campaign aimed at their foreign funding. This has included labels of “dollar media” and accusations that they toe the line of the United States or Hungarian-born billionaire George Soros, leading to increased online harassment. Attacks on media such as Atlatszo.hu by pro-government groups are picked up by the public broadcaster and news agency and then reported in a coordinated manner in Fidesz-supportive media. Journalists are accused of spreading “fake news” or being national traitors for reporting critically on the government or its stance on the war in Ukraine. The result is that independent media remain marginalised, under pressure, and facing distrust from a growing segment of the population. While physical attacks on journalists in Hungary remain very rare, the lack of accountability for the use of Pegasus spyware to hack into the mobile phones of journalists and media owners also continues to create a chilling effect. Overall, while leading independent media such as Telex, Direkt 36, 444 and HVG produce high quality watchdog journalism, they continue to operate in a hostile political, regulatory and economic climate.
One year on from its election victory, Fidesz appears content to reap the political benefits from its decade-long campaign to calibrate the media market in its favour. The impact that the European Commission’s draft Media Freedom Act will have on safeguarding independent journalism in Hungary remains questionable. Russian propaganda about the war in Ukraine will continue to flood the country’s information sphere. Democracy and the rule of law, will continue to suffer as a result.
Looking ahead, if further interventions in the media market are required, Fidesz and its allies seem more likely to move before the next elections, when the party will defend its legacy and seek an unprecedented fifth term in office. As long as the status quo persists, the outlook for independent journalism and press freedom in Hungary will continue to look grim.
