In an ideal world and in an ideal democracy, the media plays a guardian role. It provides checks and balances and is the voice of the exam. It holds other people in force accountable.
The truth, of course, is much more murky. The media has stakeholders who are interested in one story more than another, and prejudice is everywhere. For the most part, however, democracies can boast abundant freedom and plurality in their media. Journalists can monitor the powerful.
In some of the most intolerant regimes of the emerging European region, however, the watchdog becomes the pocket book, where hounds do not assume a critical role but act as spokesmen for the ruling parties. Plurality is subordinate to the state, as are checks and counterweights.
In this sense, the state of the media can be a control of turn for the state of democracy. A check that Hungary is failing, illustrated by the previous resignation this month of more than 70 members of Index.hu, one of the last independent news sites in the country.
It’s the index of the global as we know it
Earlier this year, after lunch with Maria Schmidt, key adviser to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, Hungarian businessman Miklos Vaszily bought a 50% stake in Index.hu, which adds to his media collection.
Then, late last month, former publisher Szabolcs Dull was fired. The official explanation of the plea was his inability to the “redaction tension”. The editorial hacks disagreed, seeing his dismissal as a risk to his journalistic freedoms.
“We’ve been under pressure for years that we have two situations for Index to continue to operate independently: that there is no outdoor interference in Index content or index staff composition or disposition,” a former Index hound said today in a call. by his reins. “Szabolcs Dull’s dismissal violated the last of those requirements. His dismissal was a transparent interference in the composition of the staff.
On July 24, after the Chairman of the Board of Directors, Laszlo Bodolai, refused to reinstate Mr. Dull, the staff wrote an open letter saying that “the Editorial Board that situations for the independent operation are no longer in place and have begun the termination of their employment.”
There were moving scenes as more than one part of the Index team left for a very public protest against the dismissal of its publisher. But they also protested opposing something much greater: the de-dismissal of independence. Hours later, supporters gathered in the center of Budapest to show solidarity with journalists.
The adjustments in Index were a major blow to Hungarian independent media. At the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, the site had 1.5 million readers every day. The pro-government media conglomerate KESMA now dominates the media landscape, with Alphabet Group (Google), and still present, the voices of the independent media are increasingly drowning.
As Veronika Munk, now a former deputy director of Index, put it, “The completion of Index.hu (in its genuine form) is a blow to public debate, as very few indefinite means remain. Arrangement for a intolerant government that continues to erode the role of the law, this poses a serial risk, Munk said, because “even some fundamental but vital data will remain unknown to the public.”
In addition, Hungarians have one of the weakest foreign languages in the EU, which isolates a giant component of customer population and critical voices with the government.
The case of Index is not new to the Hungarian media landscape. In 2014, news of origo suffered a similar fate and moved from one beacon of impartiality to another, echoing Orbon’s attacks on migrants, his mortal enemy George Soros and the opposition, among others. Nepszabadsag, the country’s leading left-wing newspaper, ceased publication in 2016.
“Recent times around Index are more than disturbing and definitely a component of the trend we have witnessed since 2010,” says Dr’ Ron Demeter of Amnesty International Hungary in Emerging Europe.’ Index has been an essential component of the Hungarian public debate, so this loss is a devastating blow to all who are free of the press and expression.’
This new attack on the lax media fits perfectly into Orbon’s broader program to suppress criticism, rule of law and plurality. In this sense, Orbon can be noted as a fashion innovator of anti-liberalism. Since it was taken for the time being in 2010, Hungary has had its democratic rating of the House of Freedom degraded many times. Lately it is classified as “partially loose”.
The erosion of press freedom in Hungary has been sophisticated but determined. There have been no incarcerations of hounds that have made headlines, nor have there been transparent manifestations of repression with too much foreign condemnation. In contrast, erosion has been quiet but deadly, where board meetings, law and declining advertising revenue have proven to be as effective as police batons.
Reporters Without Borders’ press freedom index has noted that Hungary has fallen 34 places since the index began in 2013, 3 years after Orbon’s tenure. The country now ranks 87th out of 180 countries included in the ranking, and ranked 87th out of 180 countries.
This is largely due to a series of laws enacted through Orbon and the ruling Fidesz party. In 2010, they began this process with the creation of a media control framework whose members are appointed through Fidesz. All means must be registered with the organization to function legally. Thanks to him, the government has the strength to determine whether the report is “moral” and “balanced,” and has the strength to impose heavy fines.
Index founder Peter Uj saw political interference as a challenge just one year after Orbon took over the job and resigned in 2011. Since then, Uj founded 444.hu and has quietly made it the seventh most-read news site in the country. the government belittles it as “a blog.”
Subsequent laws, such as those restricting foreign ownership, parliamentary problems and data, have further upset the situation.
A recent Hungarian law on specific fear of independent hounds such as Mr Uj, was passed on 30 March this year, which was intended to help combat incorrect information on the Covid-19 pandemic. It legislates so that those who disseminate “wrong information” face up to five years in criminals. Critics of the law say it will make any target report more complicated, now that criminal sentencing can be a genuine option for hounds.
A spokesman for Mr. Orbon, Zolton Kovacs, defended the law, saying that “intentionally spreading false data and distortions that can undermine or thwart public efforts over the spread of the virus.” However, it has done little to reassure independent journalists that it will not be used otherwise.
Péter Erdélyi, editor-in-chief of 444.hu, says the law can have a “deterrent effect” on the media landscape. Although he thinks it might not replace the way his environment works, it can lead to self-censorship. “When other people bratly ask for their arrest, even if they don’t think it’s going to happen, they can do it.”
In addition to this, the hounds and the media have been the subject of trials against them. More sophisticated techniques see politicians simply refusing to answer media questions that criticize them or by burying data that would possibly not be useful to their image.
For example, “public media censors Amnesty and Human Rights Watch, our statements to the press and reports are no longer published through state media,” says Dr. Demeter. “Campaigns of harassment and stigmatization against opposition politicians, NGOs, activists and hounds are common.”
All this can create a harmful environment, where the fact becomes a gray area. Fake news is presented as facts and facts are reported as false.
The death of independent media can also have monetary causes. Many state-owned enterprises promote it only in pro-government publications and get disproportionate amounts of cash to do so.
“In Hungary, when it comes to advertising, corporations want to take into account the political context of the media, which only the functionality of the media with which they decide to advertise,” says Kinga Incze, founder and CEO of Whitereport. a Hungarian-UK. media analytics company. However, he explains that independent outlets may be otherwise swollen by providing a simple selection to brands. “Many brands want to look neutral, they have to look on both sides.” In this sense, the independent index was the apparent selection.
Exporting the Hungarian model
For Orbon, preventing the media from accessing information, instilling an atmosphere of concern among hounds and sources, restricting profits, cutting foreign ownership, and stacking laws that oppose media freedom is the best recipe for ensuring pro-government media discourse.
This is where a look at the Polish media scene becomes a cause for concern.
Poland lately enjoys de facto diversity, which is used as an argument through politicians of the ruling Law and Justice Party (PiS) who oppose accusations that it also needs to restrict press freedom. Some analysts the Polish media must be balanced, albeit somewhat polarized, where public platforms and pro-government platforms counteract through personal means that favor the opposition.
Although far from ideal, the existing scenario gives voice to the opposition. Now, however, after a narrow election victory, the PiS can set its eyes on Hungary.
Critical and independent media are already suffering from obtaining the same exposure point from state-owned enterprises as pro-government media, putting them in a precarious monetary position. Large corporations such as the oil company PKN Orlen or the Post Office are only advertised at outlets that meet PiS’s editorial standards.
As Bartosz Wieli-ski, Poland’s largest deputy independent media editor, Gazeta Wyborcza, told Emerging Europe: “Just after the government’s replacement in 2015, all subscriptions for public establishments as well as state public offerings were canceled. Companies, such as PTQ Seguros. They canceled everything, and within days they signed with small outlets that lacked our diversity or our quality, but controlled through their employees. These outlets make a lot of money, and with that kind of money, you can use New York Times Advertising. »
“They wanted to take our oxygen away, choke us,” he adds. “They failed, but it was a blow.”
Gazeta Wyborcza has discovered a way to adapt to this monetary asphyxiation by creating a paywall and developing its virtual business. However, the war is not over. “They failed to destroy us monetaryly, so the PiS initiated instances of legal harassment,” says Wieli-ski. The average faced no less than 55 cases, but won all one.
As a wonderful outing, Gazeta Wyborcza was able to cope with the most wonderful typhoon than others. Smaller regional data platforms have not been as successful, many of which have been unable to cope with monetary or legal pressures.
Even public broadcasters are not immune. A recent scandal has caused public radio station Trjka to accuse censoring an anti-government song, Your Bread is greater than mine, which has surpassed the Polish pop charts. The song criticized PiS leader Jarosaw Kaczynski for visiting the grave of his mother and double brother in the Covid-19 lockdown, at a time when others were not allowed to leave their homes. The song temporarily disappeared from the charts and, in response, many radio journalists resigned.
Apart from monetary and legal harassment, other proposed laws sound eerily similar to Hungary’s. He recently promised to advance plans to restrict foreign ownership of media platforms, saying that “the media in Poland is Polish.”
This is not surprising, given that foreign-owned media has a history of embarrassing PiS. In the run-up to the recent Polish presidential election, the German company Fakt published a detail of how the eventual winner of the election, Andrzej Duda, had pardoned a convicted child sexual abuser. In response, Duda’s team accused Germany of electoral interference.
Then there’s the existing legislation that doesn’t help things. Just a year after the party took office in 2015, the National Radio and Television Council abolished and replaced through a National Media Council, most of whose members are unwavering with the PiS.
The recent speech through the ruling component, in componenticular justice minister Zbigniew Ziobro, to “repolonize” and decentralize the media has raised considerations that giant personal media corporations, such as Gazeta Wyborcza’s parent company, Agora, will have to separate or be forced to sell. at least one component of their business for pro-government owners. A new law has been passed to force the division of media corporations by restricting them to the publication of a single newspaper each, dividing the market and partially weakening the independent press. This, of course, would apply to the state media.
The PiS uses the Hungarian tactic of ignoring independent journalists.
“We can no longer influence [PiS] politicians,” says Wieli-ski, “they haven’t spoken to us since 2015.”
Most sensible of that, the deputy editor describes a climate of abuse and hatred opposed to all independent media, only Gazeta Wyborcza. “When we publish an article about your misdeeds and scandals, it is reported as a false news story, Duda tweets that they are lies. This is a copy and pasting of [US President Donald] Trump’s rhetoric.”
“Polish hounds and foreign hounds running in Poland who are not enthusiastic about piS or Duda are subject to constant abuse on social media and TVP [the public channel],” adds Mr. Wieli-ski, “I’ve been attacked two, perhaps 3 times, on public television, not to mention the countless cases of social media harassment.”
Inciting hatred that opposes independent media is a major fear for Mr. Wieli-ski. “What I fear most is that the PiS incites hatred in the public. They don’t hesitate to use anti-Semitic and homophobic insults,” he continues. “In January 2019, he stabbed the mayor of Gdask, who had long been the victim of harassment. There is transparent dating between media harassment and the death of the mayor.”
“They can do the same with my colleagues and other people from independent stores. One day, a “true patriot” comes with a knife.
In addition to fostering hatred, this hostile climate leads to a culture of self-censorship, not only of hounds, but also of those who are willing to express themselves. In this, there are striking similarities with Hungary.
“It turns out that Hungary may be the style of the Polish government in those days,” Munk says. “Following Mr. Kaczynski’s recent statements about the media, it is transparent that independent media and his editorial team will be subjected to serious attack in the near future.”
What does the freedom of the press in Hungary and Poland mean to us?
No country can claim that its media are in fact independent and free from prejudice. There are stakeholders interested in conservation, but in many countries the media is obviously somewhere on the political compass, and readers sometimes know where the medium they like is. Studies have even shown that many other people actually read the media through confirmation.
However, when the media belongs to increasingly intolerant governments – directly or – that have been silenced by silencing minorities, being selective with the fact and not respecting the rule of law, it is another matter.
Moreover, a multi-front attack on what remains of critical journalism bodes well for the state of its democracies.
In Hungary, and increasingly in Poland, many of the media are going from being a watchdog to a pocket dog. Even if Hungarians or Poles sought access to certain information, they were simply not available.
However, not all hopes are lost, there are still some small independent means that do their best to keep the media alive. In Hungary, the former Index team has major projects and lately is investing an “Index 2.0”, and 444.hu is still performing well. In Poland, the old Trojka radio presented a new station called Nowy Swiat, whose release recorded a record number of listeners on the first day.
However, the area in which independent media will need to act is shrinking.
“Independent, public-oriented and independent media policy is still declining and difficult to maintain,” said one Hungarian official, who prefers to remain anonymous. “However, the call for this type of media policy is probably sound or even expanding in Hungary.”
However, this call is divided between the age teams and the rural-urban division, either in Hungary and Poland. Smaller, rural and independent media are choking faster than those in urban areas, leaving others living in major cities such as Budapest, Warsaw, Gdassk and Krakow with much more independent policies and deeper divisions.
According to Dr. Demeter, “Hungary, and all countries, want lax media so that others can exchange concepts and opinions, know what their elected leaders are doing to make their own decisions. Freedom of the media is a component of any state of law system. »
However, like the rule of law in Hungary, the lax media is deteriorating and Poland is not left behind.
When I asked Mr. Wieli-ski if he had any final comments, he replied that “in a few months the stage may get even worse”, before concluding “pray for us”.
He contacted public and pro-government media in Hungary and Poland for this article, but they did comment.
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