The freedom of the media is more than just a matter of regulation. It also boils down to how much importance people attribute to free press, whether the demand for objective, diverse, and accurate information comes from the broad masses rather than small groups of society, and how we think about the role and mission […]
“The content presented on the awarded frequency may contain traces of the original commitments.” — (anonymous document inspector) Studying recent decisions of the media authority, I became curious to find out what motivates the Media Council in shaping the radio market. As a starting point, I looked at the information posted on the authority’s […]
In its resource guide entitled What is community radio?, the AMARC (World Association of Community Radio Broadcasters) defines community radio as “having three aspects: non-profit making, community ownership and control, community participation.” Writing in May about the contradictions of the tender announced for small community radio stations, we promised to devote a future blog entry […]
“You are not going to bite the hand that feeds you” — this is the quotation that, by way of a motto, introduces a 2008 report by the Open Society Institute on the forms of soft censorship in Latin America. I was reminded of this very instructive report as I was reading an article in […]
The research project aims at bringing empirical methods to examine how a variety of media outlets with the largest audiences have presented public affairs content in two specific periods during the second Gyurcsány cabinet and the second Orbán cabinet. To accomplish this goal, we have chosen to follow the guidance of Mertek Media Monitor in […]
With a daily circulation of 62,000 and a daily readership of 220,000 (2011 Q4 data), Népszabadság is Hungary’s largest daily devoted to politics and public affairs. Népszabadság Zrt., the publisher, is a company in which Ringier is the majority owner and the Free Press Foundation, controlled by the Hungarian Socialist Party, has a 27 percent […]
On June 18, FM1 Zrt, the company that operates Neo FM, filed for bankruptcy protection. Two days later, the Media Council, exercising its right under the Media Act, canceled the station’s media service contract. Most of the media provider’s current debt of HUF 800 million comes from unpaid media service fees owed to the Media […]
HVG.hu carefully walked around the economic environment of the national commercial radio stations. One of them is alive and well, the other one only exists by the mercy of the Media Council. The majority owner of one of them is Zsolt Nyerges, the other one was supported by the Socialists, while they had capacity for […]
“You are not going to bite the hand that feeds you” — this is the quotation that, by way of a motto, introduces a 2008 report by the Open Society Institute on the forms of soft censorship in Latin America. I was reminded of this very instructive report as I was reading an article in […]
The public at large, and even many in the profession, remain in the dark as to why July 9th, 2012, could become a milestone date in the history of Hungarian television. RTL Klub and TV2, the two nationwide commercial stations that started out in 1997, were originally licensed for terrestrial analog broadcasting for ten years. […]