“They want to make us enemies.” Campaign against Hungarian journalists highlights press freedom crisis in central Europe
Prime Minister Viktor Orban and his ruling party have spent years subjugating the Hungarian media scene, not through outright repression, but through market distortion and regulatory takeover. It can be fixed?
“Atlátszó journalists receive millions from abroad,” read 19 identical headlines. The article appeared immediately on 19 news portals at exactly 13:46.
Nineteen identical texts said that the award-winning Hungarian investigative publication was funded by the country’s enemies.
“The purpose of foreign agents [например, Átlátszó] — weaken Hungary,” a representative of a pro-government NGO quoted texts. Then the words of her leader that the issue must be “considered from the point of view of national security.”
The January 12 campaign against OCCRP partner publication Átlátszó was impressive, but editor-in-chief Tamas Bodoka was worried about something else.
Earlier that week, a right-wing spokesman called him a “traitor to the nation” in a major pro-government newspaper.
Angry over a project Átlátszó was involved in — an investigation into how much the government was spending on supporting Hungarians abroad — the author called Bodoki and other independent journalists a “criminal association of paid agents.”
“They want to portray us as enemies,” says Bodoki. Are we enemies of the nation because we monitor spending on Hungarian minorities abroad? This is a very dangerous statement.”
The campaign against a respected independent publication famous for its massive corruption investigations is not only worrisome, but also serves as a reminder of how far the crackdown on press freedom has come in Hungary.
When the country became part of the EU in 2003, the European Commission announced the end of its “tragic separation from the European family of democratic nations.”
However, the direction of the country’s development has since changed. Under Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and his Fidesz party, inspections of government departments were thwarted and independent media marginalized.
“The situation has changed over the past ten years,” says Daniel Salay, editor-in-chief of the independent publication Media1. “There used to be a lot of both independent and Fidesz-controlled newspapers. We had a choice. And now the situation is reminiscent of Russia.”
“Seventy or eighty percent of the media is controlled by the government, depending on how you count,” Salay added. — [Что касается] regional and regional newspapers, they are run by Fidesz. In this case, we are talking about one hundred percent.”
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban (Photo: NurPhoto SLR / Alamy Stock Photo)
In a country that is considered democratic, it would be difficult to achieve such power through repression, such as the imprisonment or expulsion of troubled journalists – this would worry Brussels.
Orban found another way: he decided to turn the once-competitive Hungarian media space into a pro-government media space.
Among other things, this requires control of regulators. “Take a radio station, for example,” Salay says. “Radio frequencies are administered by the national media control authority, and Fidesz appoints the head of the department and members of the board.”
Even more important is cash flow.
“After [прихода к власти] in 2010, Fidesz decided… just to give [государственное финансирование] affiliated media and starve everyone else out,” says Bodoki. “The market follows government funds, so very soon things went wrong for the left or socialist media.”
According to him, “in fact, only the Internet remained independent media.” “The government wants [существовали] only loyal “independents” [издания]and destroys all forms of funding that ensure true independence.”
Years of such policies have borne fruit: all the representatives of the Hungarian media market, which at first glance look like non-profit organizations, business groups and public broadcasters of any other European country, are in fact associated with Fidesz.
As the winter campaign against Átlátszó showed, they can easily be pitted against the few remaining independent media outlets.
It all began in December, when the popular news site Origo ran an article calling Átlátszó and several other publications a left-wing enemy “financed by a profiteer” (Hungarian-born American philanthropist George Soros). The same evening, a piece titled “Here’s How Soros Started Building the Hungarian Dollar Media” was picked up by state television channels.
The plot of the state television program Híradó echoed the Origo article, which denigrated Átlátszó and other independent publications.
Ten years ago, Origo was Hungary’s most famous independent publication and even published stories denouncing Orbán.
However, the editorial policy changed dramatically when, in the mid-2010s, the publication was acquired by a media conglomerate associated with the family of the Central Bank governor: the company won the competition in part with loans from the state bank.
In 2018, Origo was taken over by a new pro-government media fund.
And not only him. In November, businesses loyal to Orban abruptly transferred much of the country’s media assets to the KESMA (Hungarian acronym for Central European Press and Media Foundation) media fund, creating what the Associated Press called “a massive right-wing media conglomerate.”
“In just a few hours,” the International Press Institute later wrote, “KESMA has become the largest media company in Hungary with hundreds of assets, including various newspapers and magazines, TV and radio stations and news portals.”
To avoid any objection from regulators, the government said the media pooling was a matter of “national strategic interest”, thereby shielding the new fund from scrutiny.
KESMA is nominally independent but is led by people close to the ruling party. The foundation is run by longtime Orban supporter Gábor Liškai, and its board of trustees includes members of the Fidesz party and the head of a pro-government think tank.
A European fact-finding mission found that, under their control, KESMA had become a key tool for “coordinating the content of the pro-government media empire.”
The campaign against Átlátszó clearly demonstrates how this works: the newspaper Magyar Nemzet, which published articles directed against our partner, is owned by KESMA – as are 19 sites that published the same material about Átlátszó.
This case demonstrates two more tools in the government’s arsenal: first, 19 articles were promoted by the state news agency MTI. Second, they were based entirely on a press conference held that day by the NGO Civic Union Forum, which had organized a number of pro-government marches around the country.
Pro-government peaceful protest. Budapest, October 2021. (Photo: Reuters/Alamy Stock Photo)
It is not surprising that this organization is funded by the state – as well as the media as part of KESMA.
This is one of the government’s main tactics for transforming the media space. Unlike independent media, which are often short of funds, pro-Orban media regularly make money from government advertising campaigns and promote political topics, a strategy Bodoki calls “a covert way to subsidize [изданий] from KESMA with taxpayers’ money.
Mérték, a Hungarian media watchdog and think tank, has been complaining to the European Commission about what’s going on for years. According to its latest report, in 2020, 86 percent of state advertising funds went to “clearly” pro-government media outlets.
Why is the EU not doing anything?
Many accuse him of subsidizing Orbán’s anti-democratic sentiments, despite a plethora of investigative journalism and years of analysis that explain how the autocrat’s patronage networks use European money. For example, a company run by Orban’s son-in-law has won EU-funded contracts to install LED streetlights in Hungarian cities. In addition, the government auctioned off large tracts of state land to the prime minister’s family and associates, making them applicants for EU agricultural subsidies.
“The regime lives and feeds by moving EU funds … under the control of supporters of the party and the regime,” says political scientist R. Daniel Kelemen of Rutgers University.
Graffiti reading “Fidesz steals, cheats and lies” in Budapest (Photo: FordC / Alamy Stock Photo)
“The EU … claims to want to develop democracy not only in Europe, but throughout the world, but in fact has inadvertently become a sponsor of autocracy,” he added. “EU money has become a resource curse that encourages rent-seeking behavior.”
After years of inconclusive legal wrangling, the EU recently took the bold step of freezing billions of euros awarded to Hungary under a series of aid mechanisms, citing democracy problems as the reason.
Growing pressure on the budget has forced the Orbán government to make concessions: among other things, several ministers recently withdrew from university trusts over complaints of undue influence.
Yet Hungarian rights and accountability groups say their country has made little progress on the rule of law, and experts say any changes will be mostly superficial. “We will identify bogus reforms,” Kim Lane Schepperle, a professor of sociology and international relations at Princeton University, tweeted. “The question is whether they can fool the European Commission.”
Despite the fact that Brussels is concerned about the suppression of democracy, it does not pay much attention to the problem of the capture of the Hungarian media space. The EU criticized the policies of the Orban government on a number of important issues, such as the rule of law and corruption, academic freedom, the rights of refugees and LGBT people, and said almost nothing about the freedom of the press.
“There is no talk of media,” Salay says. “They are aware of the problem… but Brussels is just watching with popcorn in hand.”
The EU is drafting a Freedom of the Media Act designed to combat political interference and increase transparency in media ownership.
At first glance, it may seem that a law aimed at combating “media capture” is exactly what Hungary needs.
According to Agnes Urban, an economist at Mértek, this is not enough.
“It is very important to prevent other countries from developing in an illiberal direction,” she says. “But that won’t solve the problems of existing illiberal systems like Hungary.”
According to her, the law will require that the process of electing heads of state media be open, but in Hungary “it is very easy … to hold a public tender so that the pro-government candidate wins.”
In addition, although the law implies transparency in the allocation of public funds for advertising, it says that the current rules in the field of public procurement will remain.
“Probably, it is assumed that the public procurement process is already transparent and the problem is solved,” says Urban. However, things are not so simple in Hungary: most of the public spending on advertising goes through a private consortium informally linked to Fidesz.
“The Hungarian authorities thought everything through to the smallest detail,” she notes. “It is impossible to end such illiberal practices through such a law.”
Given how deep the problem is, it’s hard to imagine what could weaken Orban’s position. In the elections in April 2022, his opponents from different political currents united in an attempt to overthrow the current ruler. However, Fidesz won what even the normally reserved Reuters called “crushing.”
Banner of the opposition coalition “Unification for Hungary”. Mosonmagyarovar, April 2022 (Photo: SOPA Images Limited / Alamy Stock Photo)
The leader of the opposition alliance called the state’s dominance over the media the main reason for the defeat: “We knew that the forces would be unequal.”
In such an environment, even the most high-profile Átlátszó investigations have little impact, according to Bodoka.
“Our materials do not always reach the audience, [потому что] most media outlets do not quote or refer to political or controversial investigations, he says. “We were completely isolated.”
“One of our former journalists went to work as a truck driver after years of writing to no avail about the shady dealings of Orban’s son-in-law.”
The question is how much worse the situation will get. The stronger Orban’s power, the more tools he will have for repression – a vicious cycle that is difficult to break. Perhaps, in order for something to change, it is necessary to look for new levers of pressure from the outside.
Bodoki doesn’t lose hope.
“Autocracy is not eternal,” he says. “As long as Hungary is in the EU and NATO, something else may change in my lifetime.”