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 […]
On 12 August 2017, a far-right rally — the organisers of which also included neo-Nazi groups – was held in the US city of Charlottesville, Virginia, which resulted in violent incidents between the far-right demonstrators and counter-demonstrators. U.S. President Donald Trump did not expressly condemn the racist extremists, and instead referred to violence from “both […]
Mérték Média Monitor has been analysing the changes in state advertising spending for years. Our regularly published Soft Censorship report reviews the developments of the foregoing year, but it is also important to take a look at the impact of state advertising on the media market situation from a wider angle, as a long-term process. […]
On 13 July 2017, the Budapest Transport Authority (abbreviated as BKK in Hungarian) launched a new system for the online sale of public transportation tickets. Within hours, users had discovered the bugs and security flaws in the system. In our analysis, we wanted to find out whether the online media were helpful in understanding the […]
On 13 June 2017 the National Assembly adopted the Act on the Transparency of Organisations Receiving Foreign Funds. Our analysis seeks to examine whether the online media were helpful in understanding the issue, whether their coverage of the subject served to inform the public and provided a basis for the formation of sound opinions about […]
Between 2010 and 2014, an ‘illiberal state’ was being built in Hungary. In line with prime minister’s announcement on the subject, from 2014 we have been offered a perspective on how an actual, consolidated illiberal democracy operates. Hungary remains part of the European Union (EU), but its actions contradict the fundamental principles of the EU. […]
It isn’t particularly difficult or far-fetched to see the parallels between the government’s respective efforts at shutting down CEU, squeezing NGOs, and eliminating press freedom. Universities, NGOs and free media embody everything that Fidesz hates and fears. By Gábor Polyák A few weeks ago one of my students asked me if the universities would continue […]