The Media Council’s nine-year term is about to expire and, theoretically, the new members of the body should have been elected by now. That has not happened, however. Effectively, Fidesz has sabotaged the process. Those in the governing party view compliance with the democratic ground rules as irrelevant. Their only goal in this context is […]
When the Central European Press and Media Foundation (abbreviated as KESMA in Hungarian) was created in November 2018, everyone was curious to find out how massive the ownership concentration in the market had become as a result of the emergence of such a huge conglomerate, and how strong the position of government-friendly media companies was […]
The end of 2018 saw the announcement of a striking bit of news: a government-owned Media Research Institute would be created in Hungary. For the time being, the main responsibilities of this institute remain unclear. There is reason for concern, however, that media research will join a long list of areas where the state’s role […]
For many years now, Fidesz has funded its propaganda media with state resources, thereby ruining competition and distorting the entire Hungarian public discourse. Mérték Média Monitor, a Hungarian media watchdog organisation, the critical radio station Klubrádió and MEP Jávor Benedek have jointly turned to the European Commission with a complaint which demonstrates in detail how […]
The expensively operating public service media in Hungary fail to perform their actual public service functions. What they actually do is to ruin the media market while they sell themselves to the government as a propaganda mouthpiece. Funding for public service media can be curbed and made to comply with EU rules by drawing on […]
The biggest development in the media market this year was undoubtedly the disintegration of Lajos Simicska’s independent but politically conservative media empire. The shuttering of the one of Hungary’s oldest and most established dailies, Magyar Nemzet, and of Lánchíd Rádió, along with the termination of the print edition of the weekly Heti Válasz and the […]
April 10 marked another dark day for media freedom in Hungary. One of the country’s most prestigious dailies, Magyar Nemzet, is being shut down, and Lánchíd Rádió will fall silent, too. The newspaper, which used to be staunchly pro-Fidesz but has morphed into a critical media outlet over the past three years, has been generating […]
The government held a so-called national consultation to find out what the Hungarian public thinks about the “Soros Plan.” In a statement released on 20 November 2017, George Soros denied the claims in the government’s consultation questionnaire. The sixth analysis of the Mérték Media Ombudsman reviewed the coverage of this issue by nine Hungarian online […]
On 14 October 2017 the actress Lilla Sárosdi recounted in a public Facebook post how twenty years earlier a “prominent [theatre] director” had demanded that she perform oral sex on him in a car in they were sitting at the time along with a (male) friend of the director. On 19 October Sárosdi followed up […]
On 5 September 2017 the Ukrainian parliament adopted a new education law. Among other things, the act specifies that the language of instruction in schools must be the national language, that is Ukrainian, though some exceptions are allowed. Although in principle the goal is to bolster the position of the Ukrainian language while limiting the […]