Hungary under the Fidesz boot: How a government is controlling the media landscape
The state of press freedom in Hungary is, to put it bluntly, alarming. While the "Continent" project compares the media situation in European countries with that of Austria, it quickly becomes clear that Hungary ranks far behind in international press freedom rankings. What might manifest in Austria as "message control" in the form of charm offensives or subtle influence is, in Hungary, a "very hard propaganda line." Here, journalists' questions are simply ignored; instead, the only goal is to push government agendas. The result is a virtually parallel media landscape that has hardly any contact with the mainstream media that exist in other European countries.
The systematic stranglehold of power
The foundation of this worrying development is the near-total control of the media by the ruling Fidesz party and its affiliated oligarchs. The number of newspaper publishers, as well as radio and television stations, has been drastically reduced. German and Austrian companies also played a questionable role in this, selling their newspapers and online portals to government-linked oligarchs – often in exchange for tax cuts or other lucrative deals. A prominent example of this is the sale of the largest news portal, Origo, by Deutsche Telekom in 2005.
A decisive blow to media pluralism was the establishment of the Central European Press and Media Foundation (KESMA) in 2018. With the stroke of a pen, 476 media outlets were brought under the control of this government-loyal foundation. Prime Minister Orbán himself exempted KESMA from antitrust scrutiny by classifying it as "of strategic economic importance." While this action violates Hungarian media law and competition law, it was legalized by the government's parliamentary majority. Overall, the government directly or indirectly controls an estimated 80 percent of the media.
Public broadcasting as state-run media
The so-called public broadcasting system in Hungary has essentially degenerated into a purely state-run media outlet; it no longer exists in the true sense of the word. The Hungarian news agency MTI is part of this apparatus and consistently fails to report on opposition events. For example, the nationwide opposition primaries, which attracted considerable public interest, were met with a wall of silence from the state news agency. According to critics, the content broadcast is pure propaganda, portraying Western Europe as teetering on the brink of collapse, with false reports about alleged civil war in Germany or poverty in Sweden, often based on staged interviews with government officials presented as "ordinary citizens."
A key instrument of influence is the allocation of public funds for advertising. Over 300 million euros are awarded to newspapers annually – naturally, only to those that demonstrate compliance in their reporting. This "advertising corruption" is a "huge problem of political influence" and leads to financially struggling media outlets becoming dependent on public funding.
The creeping erosion of democracy
Legal experts point out that the sweeping changes in the Hungarian media landscape, while representing a weakening of democracy, were implemented "legally correctly" and through "democratic means." Orbán used the constitutional majority he secured in 2010, thanks to a problematic electoral system, to amend laws and undermine the oversight function of institutions like the Constitutional Court. While a Constitutional Court still exists, it no longer wields any real power of oversight.
Hungarian society has accepted these far-reaching changes with a degree of resignation. While there have been repeated demonstrations for press freedom, even a movement called "One Million People for Press Freedom," a broad, sustained outcry like those expected in Western democracies has failed to materialize. Tragically, the case of Hungary demonstrates that laws are merely "forms that can be filled with different content" and that a strong societal foundation for democratic values is essential for institutions and norms to function effectively. The result is an "urbanization" in which the government-critical population is concentrated in cities, while people in rural areas are largely exposed to government propaganda. There is also considerable skepticism towards foreign journalists on the part of the ruling party, making it difficult to find interviewees from Fidesz-affiliated circles or to conduct interviews without complicated authorization processes that attempt to influence the analysis. The government itself maintains that objectivity is impossible and that all journalists are "political combatants."